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REPORT: Judge In Roger Stone Case Orders DOJ To Clarify Elements Of Trump’s Commutation

   DailyWire.com
WASHINGTON , DC FEBRUARY 20: Roger Stone arrives for his sentencing at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC on February, 20, 2020. Roger Stone, President Trumps longtime friend and political confidant faces prison for witness tampering and lying to Congress (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images

On Monday, the federal court judge overseeing the case against former Republican campaign advisor, Roger Stone, ordered the Department of Justice to provide details of President Donald Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s sentence — specifically, to clarify whether the commutation applies to Stone’s full sentence or whether it applies only to potential jail time.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the official who sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison followed by two years on “supervised probation,” issued the Monday order, requesting that the DOJ provide a full copy of the president’s commutation order to the U.S. District Court.

Jackson told officials to send the court “a copy of the Executive Order commuting the defendant’s sentence and to address the question of the scope of the commutation, in particular, whether it involves the sentence of incarceration alone or also the period of supervised release,” per Fox News.

“The filing, signed by Jackson, comes after the White House announced Friday that the president signed an Executive Grant of Clemency commuting what they called the ‘unjust sentence’ of Stone, just days before the longtime political operative was slated to report to prison to serve more than three years for charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation,” the outlet reported Monday.

Stone was set to surrender himself at a federal prison on Tuesday to serve time on “seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress.”

Stone denies any wrongdoing and the president has long maintained that Stone, with whom he had an arms-length relationship, was the subject of a political witch hunt designed to entrap members of the Trump 2016 campaign and not an aboveboard criminal investigation.

As recently as last month, Trump accused prosecutors of targeting Stone, tweeting that Stone was the “victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!”

Stone, like others, faced criminal charges stemming from a long-term Justice Department inquiry — and associated Congressional inquiries — into whether members of the Trump 2016 campaign and, subsequently, the Trump transition team, illegally coordinated with Russian officials to undermine the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, but not directly connected to any actual effort to collaborate with the Russian government.

Although the district court judge’s decision made headlines Monday, Jackson does not appear to be following in the footsteps of another district court judge, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is now in a prolonged back and forth with the Justice Department over the Michael Flynn case — a back-and-forth which was, most recently, in the hands of an appellate court judge who ordered the Flynn case dismissed.

It is unlikely that Stone’s commutation will be overturned, however, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced over the weekend that she and other House Democrats would seek legislation limiting the president’s ability to issue pardons and commutations in the future.

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