- Andrew Weissmann, who worked as a prosecutor in the Robert Mueller investigation in Russia, has claimed that Trump saved former aide Roger Stone from prison as a reward.
- “Mr. Stone was sentenced to spend 40 months in prison until he received his reward for keeping his lips sealed,” Weissmann wrote in a New York Times opinion piece on Tuesday.
- Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s 40-month sentence last Friday was widely criticized. Republican Senator Mitt Romney called it an act of “unprecedented historical corruption.”
- Stone was convicted in 2019 of lying to a congressional panel investigating links between Russia, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign.
- But Trump has defended the decision, alleging that Stone did not receive a fair trial and boasting that he received “favorable reviews” for the decision.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Andrew Weissmann, one of the prosecutors who served in Russia’s investigation of Special Adviser Robert Mueller, has claimed that President Donald Trump commuted his former adviser Roger Stone’s prison sentence as a reward for “keeping his lips sealed”.
In an opinion piece published in The New York Times on Tuesday, Weissmann wrote that Stone was found guilty “beyond all reasonable doubt, of lying to Congress about coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign, Mr. Stone, WikiLeaks and Russia “
“Mr. Stone was sentenced to spend 40 months in prison until he received his reward for keeping his lips sealed,” Weissmann continues, on Trump’s decision last week to commute his former adviser’s prison sentence.
Weissmann is an attorney who played a key role in the Mueller investigation. It was announced Tuesday that it would publish an internal report of the investigation in September.
—TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 14, 2020
Trump’s decision last week to save time in Stone’s jail drew widespread criticism from both political parties. Senator Mitt Romney, an outspoken Republican, described it as an act of “unprecedented historical corruption.”
The president defended Monday his decision to commute Stone’s sentence, saying: “I receive rave reviews for what I did for Roger Stone.”
Stone, a “dirty cheat” veteran and Republican strategist, was convicted of lying about his contact with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.
The site published thousands of emails stolen from Democratic servers in an attempt to discredit Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, who US intelligence later discovered had been stolen by Russian intelligence.
In his first television interview since the commute, Stone told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Monday that Trump had indeed saved his life.
“He was literally hours away from being sent to a COVID-infested prison in violation of the current Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice [Department of Justice] policies, “he said.
He also claimed that a lung condition meant that a coronavirus infection could have been fatal to him.
Stone went on to claim that the trial was unfair: “I had a partial judge. I had an accumulated jury. I had a corrupt jury woman … My trial ended before it began.”
In the interview, he responded to claims that the commutation was a reward for his silence, claiming that he had refused to lie to incriminate Trump.
“There was no circumstance under which I could give false testimony against the president,” he said. “I just wasn’t willing to lie … What I said was consistent, that I wouldn’t lie against my 40-year-old friend. [Trump] so they can use it for impeachment. “
On Saturday, Mueller also wrote a rare op-ed in The Washington Post defending his investigation against claims made by Trump and his allies that he was politically motivated.
“Stone was prosecuted and convicted for committing federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and with good reason,” Mueller wrote.
Weissmann, in his op-ed, asked attorney William Barr, who said he did not support Stone’s sentence commutation, to call Stone before a grand jury to determine what really happened in 2016.
“If there was nothing wrong with your coordination efforts, why did you lie to Congress about them? This question remains unanswered, as the Mueller report points out,” wrote Weissmann of Stone.
