House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday he supports President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Stone, who was days away from starting a 40-month federal prison sentence following his conviction for lying to congressional investigators during the Robert Mueller Russia investigation, accused McCarthy and New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of advising Trump to hold off on pardoning him until after the November election. The suggestion came during a May trip on Air Force One to Florida, a source told Politico.
“I know that Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik were lobbying the president against any act of clemency. They, I guess, wanted me to die in a fetid, squalid hellhole in Georgia of coronavirus,” he said.
McCarthy disputed this charge to reporters during a press call on Friday.
“I’m not sure what Stone is talking about,” McCarthy said.
The California Republican added, “Yes, I support the president’s commuting of the sentence. I think the president did the right thing, and he has the right to do it. And if you ask the president, he has used this power much less than other presidents in the past. Considerably less than what the Democratic presidents used.”
McCarthy said he did not think it would have been the appropriate decision to pardon Stone, but new information that has emerged in the past few months, he believes, merits a commutation for Stone.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence “appalling” and said legislation should be passed to limit presidential pardon power from those politically connected to the executive.
