The Justice Department released President Trump’s executive grant of clemency for his longtime associate Roger Stone, revealing on Monday that the convicted felon’s supervised release and his unpaid fine have been commuted along with his prison sentence.
“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT KNOWN that I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant clemency to the said ROGER JASON STONE, JR.,” Trump’s two-page order stated. “I commute the entirety of the prison sentence imposed upon the said ROGER JASON STONE, JR. to expire immediately; I also commute the entirety of the two-year term of supervised release with all its conditions; and finally, I remit any unpaid remainder of the $20,000 fine imposed.”
Trump’s grant of clemency, dated Friday, further said: “I ALSO DIRECT the Pretrial Services Office, upon receipt of this warrant, to effect immediately the release of the said ROGER JASON STONE, JR., from supervision, and all conditions imposed, including home confinement, with all possible speed.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee who presided over Stone’s case and handed down Stone’s 40-month sentence earlier this year following the GOP operative’s jury conviction in November, asked for more information about Trump’s grant of clemency on Monday, which the White House had announced in a press release on Friday. The DOJ made it publicly available shortly thereafter.
Stone was sentenced by Jackson to 40 months for obstruction of justice and 12 months for the other five counts to be served concurrently. He also received a $20,000 fine and two years of supervised release.
Stone, 67, was swept up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and had been convicted of lying to congressional investigators about his alleged attempted outreach to WikiLeaks, obstructing a congressional investigation, and attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness.
After his conviction and sentencing, more of Stone’s mentions in Mueller’s report were declassified.
The White House released a statement Friday evening announcing that Trump had signed a grant of clemency, calling Stone a “victim of the Russia Hoax.” With a commutation but not a full pardon, Stone maintains his criminal record.
Mueller, a former FBI director, wrote an opinion article in the Washington Post on Saturday arguing that Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Trump, “remains a convicted felon, and rightfully so.”
Mueller’s April 2019 report concluded that Russia interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign. Mueller also laid out 10 instances of possible obstructions of justice, which Democrats saw as a road map for impeachment. Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that Trump hadn’t obstructed justice.
“Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy,” Mueller wrote in his opinion piece. “The Russia investigation was of paramount importance.”
The White House press office harshly criticized the credibility of Mueller’s investigation when Stone’s clemency was announced, arguing that there was “never any collusion” between the Trump team and Russia.
“Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election. The collusion delusion spawned endless and farcical investigations, conducted at great taxpayer expense, looking for evidence that did not exist,” the White House said. “As it became clear that these witch hunts would never bear fruit, the Special Counsel’s Office resorted to process-based charges leveled at high-profile people in an attempt to manufacture the false impression of criminality lurking below the surface.”
