TRUMP MOVE TO SPARE AIDE FROM JAIL IS ‘STAGGERING CORRUPTION’
▶ President sparks fury by commuting the sentence of his former special counsel Roger Stone
Donald Trump may have commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence but the president’s long-time ally is still a convicted criminal, former special counsel Robert Mueller said on Saturday.
Stone, 67, was about to begin serving a 40-month prison term today after his conviction on seven felony charges originally brought by Mr Mueller as part of the Russia collusion investigation.
The charges include tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to help him win the 2016 election.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post on Saturday, Mr Mueller defended his investigation as being of “paramount importance”, dismissing White House claims he was out to get Mr Trump and those who worked with him.
“Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so,” Mr Mueller wrote as Democrats – and two Republican senators – piled on Mr Trump for again intervening in the justice system to help an ally.
Senator Mitt Romney infuriated Mr Trump when he became the only Republican to vote to convict the president in his impeachment trial. He pulled no punches on Saturday.
“Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” he tweeted.
Another Republican senator, Pat Toomey, also criticised Mr Trump but in milder terms, saying that because Stone had been duly convicted it was “a mistake” to commute his sentence.
On Friday Mr Trump defended his move, saying Stone and others convicted of crimes in the Russia investigation were caught up in a “witch hunt”.
“They’ve all been treated unfairly, and what I did, I will tell you this: people are extremely happy because in this country, they want justice,” Mr Trump said.
Most Republicans have kept quiet on the matter, while Democratic critics led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned Mr Trump unanimously.
“President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of top campaign adviser Roger Stone, who could directly implicate him in criminal misconduct, is an act of staggering corruption,” she tweeted.
Ms Pelosi called for legislation “to ensure that no president can pardon or commute the sentence of an individual who is engaged in a cover-up campaign to shield that president from criminal prosecution”. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden weighed in without mentioning Stone by name.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in modern American history,” he tweeted. “Every day that he remains in office, he further threatens the future of our democracy. We have to vote him out this November,” Mr Biden wrote.
The flamboyant Stone is easily recognised by his trademark dark glasses and bowler hat.
A long-time political activist and consultant, he even sports a tattoo of his former boss, president Richard Nixon. He and Mr Trump were introduced in the 1980s and were said to have hit it off immediately.
Mr Trump’s action instantly brought new accusations that the president has intervened freely in the US justice system to help friends and allies, and punish critics and perceived enemies.
In a highly unusual move in May, the US Justice Department moved to dismiss its own case against Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Mr Trump, although he had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
A federal judge is demanding a further judicial review of the matter. Stone is the first person who was directly involved in Mr Trump’s campaign to receive clemency.
Indictment papers said a top Trump campaign official had sent Stone to get information from the WikiLeaks organisation regarding thousands of emails hacked from Democratic accounts – a leak that fuelled Republican attacks on Mr Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump has denied knowledge of any such contact with WikiLeaks.
Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon
ROBERT MUELLER Former special counsel
One by one, the guardrails of American democracy are bending and cracking during Donald Trump’s Presidency. Whether the system can survive this unprecedented, and self-inflicted, test remains unanswered. But there is a crucial object lesson already evident for all democratising societies, and any that seek to live by the rule of law.
In the latest of his myriad transgressions of political norms, Mr Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of one of his close associates, the notorious political fixer and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” Roger Stone. Mr Stone was due to begin a lengthy prison term for lying under oath regarding his role as a conduit between WikiLeaks and the 2016 Trump campaign.
He was not lying to protect himself. It is not unlawful for a private individual like Mr Stone to be in touch with an organisation like WikiLeaks and/or a presidential campaign. But it is highly illegal for a US presidential campaign to accept anything of value from foreign powers, including the huge dumps of hacked emails from the opposition that WikiLeaks publicised, reportedly on behalf of Russian intelligence and in apparent co-ordination with Mr Stone.
Mr Trump testified under oath to the Robert Mueller investigation that he knew nothing of these communications, but other sworn testimony and most known facts, as well as common sense, suggest otherwise. But without Mr Stone’s corroboration, Mr Trump and his campaign were effectively protected.
What is groundbreaking is not merely that Mr Trump is using these powers to reward friends, which other presidents have allegedly done – although that is bad enough. It is to reward someone who, both sides basically admit, helped him cover up his own misdeeds to get elected.
It is as close as anyone can get to pardoning themselves.
And, indeed, the presidential pardon power, according to the US Constitution, does appear virtually absolute. The only open question is, could a president pardon himself? There are legal arguments on both sides, because until now it has been considered a preposterous scenario.
No president, including Richard Nixon, has pardoned their own corrupt cronies like this or used pardon and commutation powers to facilitate or reward a self-serving cover up.
What has been revealed by the Trump era is how many of the guardrails of American democracy are conventional and cultural rather than clear-cut, enforceable and institutional. There are some important formal and structural limits, certainly, but much of what historically has appeared impossible or ridiculous turns out to be merely unconventional.
Mr Trump keeps demonstrating that US presidential power is more regulated by self-restraint than by constitutional or institutional limits, and that lesson clearly is not over.
Having overthrown a monarch, the framers of the Constitution were profoundly uneasy about creating a powerful chief executive in a centralised state. The first American political system, the ill-fated Articles of Confederation (1781 to 1789), was so decentralised that it could not function.
That is why the still-operative 1789 Constitution created a centralised federal government with the presidency as a powerful chief executive to make quick judgments about immediate necessities.
Yet there was considerable anxiety about the potential for a rogue, monarchical executive, unmoored from self-restraint.
Proponents of the Constitution argued that filtering mechanisms such as the electoral college and the good judgment of the people and, especially, the elite, would prevent an unscrupulous demagogue from seizing this enormous power, and that the institutional constraints of Congress and the courts would intervene to prevent them from misusing it.
Ironically, during in the 2016 presidential election, the electoral college proved the primary vehicle through which Mr Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, who beat him by almost three million votes in the popular tally. And Congress is almost entirely guided by partisan interests, with Republican senators uninterested in the facts of the Ukraine scandal and declining to hear from a single witness before acquitting the President.
Many, and arguably all, presidents have played games with their vast powers. Nixon spied on and undermined his political enemies. Abraham Lincoln suspended civil liberties. But until now, the US has never had a president who does not acknowledge that self-imposed limitations are essential to the proper functioning of the office.
The Supreme Court – which remains a functional, independent institution largely because of the political savvy of Chief Justice John Roberts – last week slapped down Mr Trump’s claims of total immunity from criminal and congressional investigation, but put limits on what can be demanded of him.
If the courts move quickly, that could prove catastrophic for the President. But don’t hold your breath.
Instead, we are again reminded that the primary remaining, and always paramount, guardrail is the next election.
Mr Trump, deeply behind in the polls, now daily tweets the phrase “Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?” conjuring the spectre of millions of forged mail-in ballots, implicitly prepared by a foreign power, to defeat him.
We may see more untested guardrails rammed later this year, especially if events keep going badly for him.
If defeated, will Mr Trump leave office? If he tries to cling to power, will other institutions thwart him? Before he goes, will he try to actually pardon himself? Can he?
But the main lesson for the rest of the world is already clear. Conventional and cultural restraints are not worth much. Never say, “no one would do that”. Put it in writing, with consequences. Otherwise, it is a matter of time.
In a nutshell, they haven’t been enforceable or institutional but rather cultural – and therefore subject to exploitation