An Indefensible Commutation

[EasyAce]

Editorial, National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/an-indefensible-commutation/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=second

President Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone. The timing, late on Friday, suggests internal embarrassment over the move, and we wish there were more . . .

. . . The media and Democrats are incandescent with outrage over the commutation for someone they say covered up Trump’s treacherous dealings with Russia in 2016. But the indictment of Stone and subsequent trial definitively established that Stone had no inside knowledge of Russian hacking or WikiLeaks’s role in disseminating stolen DNC emails; instead, he tried to parlay media gossip and what he heard from an intermediary into a sense that he knew more than he did. Never before has an alleged spy been such a fatuous figure and ridiculous braggart.

There is no doubt, though, that Stone was guilty of perjury and a laughably ham-handed attempt at witness tampering. He was justly convicted of these charges and deserved to go to jail; in our system of justice, self-parody is no defense.

Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly opposed the commutation and was right to do so. The act of clemency is made worse by the fact that Stone repeatedly argued that he was owed it for his loyalty to the president . . .

[catfish1957]

Anyone thinking Stone was complict in anything complicated or nefarious as Russian espionage, are sadly misguided.

He (and his buddy Pecker) were nothing but  miscreants tasked with slimeing all of Trump's '16 primary opponents. 
I can't stand the f'er.  But OTOH, there is nothing against the law about just being sleazy

[EasyAce]

I can't stand the f'er.  But OTOH, there is nothing against the law about just being sleazy

Being a sleazebucket by itself isn't enough to get you behind bars. (If you think we have prison overcrowding issues now, try to imagine them if every mere sleazebucket from coast to coast and all points in between could be sent to the hoosegow just for being sleazebuckets.) But perjury and attempted witness tampering (and even the otherwise execrable Bill Barr said Stone had it coming) is.

[skeeter]

Anyone thinking Stone was complict in anything complicated or nefarious as Russian espionage, are sadly misguided.

He (and his buddy Pecker) were nothing but  miscreants tasked with slimeing all of Trump's '16 primary opponents. 
I can't stand the f'er.  But OTOH, there is nothing against the law about just being sleazy

His attempt at witness tampering was 'laughable' because it wasn't a serious attempt. He suggested to a third party he was gonna steal a talk show host's therapy dog. Good grief.

[EasyAce]

His attempt at witness tampering was 'laughable' because it wasn't a serious attempt. He suggested to a third party he was gonna steal a talk show host's therapy dog. Good grief.

In all fairness, Roger Stone is about as bright as a spent piece of sandpaper.

[skeeter]

In all fairness, Roger Stone is about as bright as a spent piece of sandpaper.

No argument there. I don't know how else to describe a guy who had Richard M Nixon tatooed to his back.