President Trump, like Presidents Barack Obama and especially Bill Clinton before him, has now abused his commutation power for rank political ends in a way that undermines the cause of justice.
The fact that Obama and Clinton “got away with it” does not make Trump’s commutation of the sentence of his longtime political dirty trickster, Roger Stone, less of an affront to the system.
A duly constituted jury found Stone guilty of multiple counts of lying under oath and also of witness tampering. His lies obviously were intended to protect the Trump campaign, for which Stone tried to be a link to Russian intelligence officials aiming to influence the U.S. election. His lies had the clear effect of thwarting an official investigation into that Russian meddling. The investigation, apart from its partial and contentious focus on alleged collusion by Trump’s campaign, was necessary and important in exposing the nature and scope of that meddling.
Even Attorney General William Barr reportedly recommended against the commutation after earlier having proclaimed Stone’s conviction “righteous” and “appropriate.” Indeed, Barr had intervened to reduce the prosecutors’ original sentence recommendation of nine years for Stone. When the trial judge handed down a sentence of 40 months, Barr pronounced it “fair.”
There is no defensible excuse for eliminating Stone’s sentence. Stone tried to enable a hostile foreign power to influence an election, in ways illicit and bordering on illegal, and then illegally and unambiguously lied about it. For this, he should serve jail time.
There is one way in which Trump’s commutation is worse than some of the outlandish commutations and pardons from Obama and Clinton. Those earlier clemencies included neither crimes directly connected to the sanctity of our elections nor ones involving illicit foreign activities related to elections.
The worst of those other presidents’ clemencies also came when they were on their way out the door, leaving office and thus unable to benefit electorally from them. Trump’s action, in the run-up to the next election, sends a signal that foreign shenanigans to benefit his candidacy are likely to go unpunished.
Russia really did interfere in 2016, even if the entire Russia-collusion scandal was a hoax, and this makes the Stone commutation an invitation for further meddling on Trump’s behalf.
Traditionally, presidential clemency is awarded to people serving longer sentences than they deserve, to people who have made amends, or to people who have expressed and demonstrated real contrition. Generally, presidents look for recipients who have earned mercy. In this way, clemency serves the broader cause of justice.
Stone, in contrast, is entirely unrepentant. This clemency serves only Trump’s ego and his political needs while enabling past and future injustice.
This is corruption. It is wrong each time any president engages in it. Trump’s commutation of Stone is particularly galling and is one more sign of his unfitness for the presidency.
