President Donald Trump has said he won’t pardon former associate Roger Stone just yet, adding he’ll wait until the legal process is complete to make a decision on the matter.
CNN reported that Trump made the statement at a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“I’m not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the United States, I want the process play out, I think that’s the best thing to do,” Trump said. “Because I’d love to see Roger exonerated and I’d love to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.”
Trump suggested he would decide whether to pardon or commute Stone’s sentence once that process was completed.
“At some point I’ll make a determination, but Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process,” the president said.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Roger Stone on Thursday was sentenced to 40 months in prison – a little over three years – for lying to congress and obstruction an investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. That investigation determined that no one on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, said during sentencing that Stone’s crimes “transcend party.”
“The truth still exits. The truth still matters,” Jackson said. “For that reason, the dismay and disgust at the defendant’s belligerence should transcend party.”
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To reiterate, no one who was anti-Trump and lied to congress has been sentenced. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan have yet to be brought up on lying charges despite evidence that they did. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just had the investigation into his own lying dropped.
Prosecutors had asked previously that Stone be sentenced up to nine years in prison for his non-violent crimes. The prosecutors wrote that Stone “obstructed Congress’ investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, lied under oath, and tampered with a witness.” Further, when he was indicted, “he displayed contempt for this Court and the rule of law.”
As previously noted, Stone likely displayed contempt “because his house was raided early in the morning to make his arrest more dramatic. CNN was tipped off to the raid and had cameras set up outside so the nation could watch police forcefully arrest a 67-year-old man who had been charged with non-violent crimes.”
The Department of Justice immediately pushed back on the harsh sentencing recommendation, leading the four prosecutors on the case to resign. After the actual sentence was handed down Thursday morning, Trump tweeted out a segment from Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program suggesting Trump could pardon Stone.
“President Trump could end this travesty in an instant with a pardon, and there are indications tonight that he will do that,” Carlson said in a segment on his show Wednesday night. Carlson also in that segment called Stone’s prosecution “a shocking insult to the American tradition of equal justice.”