Why Trump commuted Stone's sentence

Why Trump Commuted Stone’s Sentence Instead of Pardoning Him.

...The brand of clemency Trump used here is a bit of a tell. Rather than pardoning Stone, Trump ordered a commutation, which means that Stone’s conviction remains on his record, but he does not have to serve a day in prison. One reason to use a commutation instead of a pardon is to preserve the illusion of Stone’s innocence.

A pardon typically requires an expression of guilt and remorse, and conveys forgiveness and mercy. With a commutation, Stone may persist in his claims of innocence by challenging his conviction in a motion for new trial and on appeal. Commutation perpetuates the “witch hunt” narrative of Trump’s revisionist history. 

A second, and more important, reason for commutation, though, is that it preserves Stone’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This factor makes commutation a much more attractive alternative for Trump...

Mueller: Stone is still a convicted felon

Photo: AP

In the Washington Post:

Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.

by Robert Mueller

The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office.

The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.

Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy. It was critical that they be investigated and understood. 

By late 2016, the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled to a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate. 

And the FBI knew that the Russians had done just that: Beginning in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen by Russian military intelligence officers from the Clinton campaign. Other online personas using false names — fronts for Russian military intelligence — also released Clinton campaign emails.

Following FBI Director James B. Comey’s termination in May 2017, the acting attorney general named me as special counsel and directed the special counsel’s office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The order specified lines of investigation for us to pursue, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. 

One of our cases involved Stone, an official on the campaign until mid-2015 and a supporter of the campaign throughout 2016. Stone became a central figure in our investigation for two key reasons: He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of emails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers.

We now have a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate. 

We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. 

The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

Uncovering and tracing Russian outreach and interference activities was a complex task. The investigation to understand these activities took two years and substantial effort. Based on our work, eight individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities, including senior Russian intelligence officers, were charged with federal crimes.

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information. 

Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its witnesses. When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those efforts.

We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law. The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.

Why Did Trump Commute Roger Stone’s Sentence Instead of Pardoning Him?

Mueller's report showed that President Trump obstructed justice.

David Brooks disappears the Republican Party

From Driftglass:

...In yet another lazy, error-riddled, paint-by-numbers column (when has Mr. Brooks written any other kind?) about the problems that are crippling our society, Mr. Brooks once again manages to make the entire Republican Party disappear.

So let's skip a stone across Mr. Brooks' shallow, brackish puddle of words to see what he'e really talking about...

Two Cheers for Liberalism! (Or Maybe One and a Half)

Free speech has to rest on a shared morality.

...I defend liberalism because I think...

There follows a Brooks-brand sweeping and false generalization.

I am a liberal in a classical Enlightenment sense...

Translation: I'm a Conservative who has supported depraved Republican policies my entire adult life but you are out of your damn mind if you think I'm going to even mention that Conservatism exists. Instead I'll adopt the wingnut Twitter troll's favorite protecting coloration, "classic Liberalism." Hell, I'll milk an entire column out of it!

Liberalism was based on the idea...

Yet another bullshit generalization.

Liberalism sometimes devolves into atomization, an alienated society of lonely buffered selves.

Have I mentioned that the first half of this column is nothing but a farrago of ludicrous and wrong categorical pronouncements?

Liberalism assumed that people are primarily...

No, we don't.

By itself, liberalism is so thin it can’t even defend itself.

I don't even know what that means.

Now strap in, because Mr. Brooks is about to make a head-snapping pivot from assembling a laundry of list of laughably simpleminded generalizations about "Liberalism"...to a disquisition on how much he hates laughably simpleminded generalizations.

One of the reasons that America is so angry right now is that there is so much dehumanization. Racism reduces a human being to a skin color. The first casualty in a culture, political or generational war is the willingness to see the full humanity of the other. In this moment, some people seem eager even to dehumanize themselves by reducing themselves to a simple label and making politics their one identity. “Speaking as a. …”

"America is so angry"? Which Americans, David? "Some people seem eager"? Which people, David?

If liberalism left little space for group identity...

It didn't.

You get all these absurd generalizations: White people believe this. Elites believe that.

If I start laughing now at David Brooks mounting his high horse and riding up the steep cliffs of High Dudgeon over other people's "absurd generalizations" I will never be able to stop.

But calm yourself, kiddo, because Mr. Brooks can save us all from the sucky, imaginary "Liberalism" which he just invented with a megadose of another "ism" that Mr. Brooks has glommed onto.

Personalism is the belief that ...

Personalism is about constructing systems...

Personalism judges each social arrangement by how well it...

800 words about what has brought American society to its knees and not a single mention of Republicans, Conservatives or the political history of the past 30 years.

If I were Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I'd be pretty pissed that David Brooks just used his column in The New York Times to cancel my entire life's work.

Florida is now reporting hospitalization data where the primary cause of admission is Covid. Currently there are 51,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid. At the peak of the epidemic's first wave, centered in New York in April, there were about 60,000 Americans Hospitalized. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/raW9d4vfrr

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) July 11, 2020