House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks during a news conference, July 9, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press
Democrats condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to spare his long-time friend and adviser Roger Stone from prison.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, “Congress will take action to prevent this type of brazen wrongdoing.”
Republican reaction was largely muted, but Senator Mitt Romney denounced the action on Twitter, saying: “Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”
Trump commuted Stone’s prison sentence late Friday, intervening to protect him in a criminal case. He painted Stone as a victim.
“Roger Stone was treated horribly. Roger Stone was treated very unfairly. Roger Stone was brought into this witch hunt, this whole political witch hunt and the Mueller scam, it is a scam because it’s been proven false.”
Stone, who had been convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, expressed relief upon hearing the news from Trump.
“And at 67 years old, with a history of respiratory problems and other underlying health issues, the danger was very real. This, I think, is demonstrated by the point that the prison in Jesup, Georgia, to which I was supposed to go on Tuesday, has in the last two weeks released a violent sex criminal who is both a pedophile and a child pornographer, to protect them from infection by Coronavirus, a second violent sex criminal who was also a pedophile, and a bank robber.”
Stone was scheduled to report by Tuesday to a federal prison in Jesup, Georgia, to begin serving a sentence of over three years.