Lawfare: “President Trump’s commutation of the prison sentence of his long-time confidante Roger Stone is wholly unsurprising. Indeed, given Trump’s repeated teasing of the matter over the life of the case against Stone, it would have been something of surprise had he not intervened so that his felonious friend was spared time behind bars.”
“But the predictable nature of Trump’s action should not obscure its rank corruption. In fact, the predictability makes the commutation all the more corrupt, the capstone of an all-but-open attempt on the president’s part to obstruct justice in a self-protective fashion over a protracted period of time. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s actually not. Trump publicly encouraged Stone not to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation; he publicly dangled clemency as a reward for silence; and he has now delivered. The act is predictable precisely because the corrupt action is so naked.”
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