Roger Stone Goes Free | LegalEagle’s Real Law Review

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Has sentence commuted, celebrates by calling radio host a racist slur.

👍︎︎ 16 👤︎︎ u/divinepure 📅︎︎ Jul 20 2020 🗫︎ replies
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- Thanks to Backblaze for keeping Legal Eagle in the air, or, cloud, backed up in the cloud. President Trump uses his pardon power and commutes Roger Stone's sentence. - I'm getting rave reviews for what I did for Roger Stone. - Is there anything to be done? Are there limits to this pardon power? As you may recall, Roger Stone is proud to call himself a dirty trickster. Stone has been around since the Nixon era, but he found his true home as an advisor to President Donald Trump. And last year, Stone was convicted of obstruction of justice, giving false statements to Congress, and witness tampering stemming from the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election interference. And last week, President Trump commuted Roger Stone's three year sentence. This is in stark contrast to the two individuals who have offered testimony against the president, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Vindman, whose military career is now over, and Michael Cohen, who is now in prison. Roger Stone lied for the president, and now, theoretically, at least, he is free. Did President Trump do anything illegal in this instance? And could legislators pass a law to limit the president's power? Well, let's find out. (dramatic music) Hey, Legal Eagles, it's time to think like a lawyer, because at least one of the president's confidants is probably not going to jail. Now, before we talk about the legality of the commutation of Roger Stone's sentence, and what that actually means, let's talk about what Roger Stone actually did that theoretically was going to send him to jail in the first place. Now, a lot of Americans still have the perception that the Mueller investigation was a political witch hunt. I can't imagine where they got that from, but it's worth recalling just how important the inquiry was into the 2016 election and how Roger Stone's lies helped protect the president. Now, a lot of this information was already public record, but a good portion of it was just conveyed to Congress by Aaron Zelinsky, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Roger Stone. You might recall that Attorney General Barr filed a memorandum effectively retracting Zelinsky's recommendation that Roger Stone serve a serious prison term as a result of the obstruction of justice related charges, and Zelinsky withdrew in protest, and then testified before Congress. But going back even further, based on Zelinsky's testimony and "The Mueller Report" itself, you might recall that in 2016 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to damage Hillary Clinton's election chances. Putin wanted to convey damaging information about the Clinton campaign and wanted that information to come from a source that had the appearance of authenticity. So Putin selected WikiLeaks, because of the perception that WikiLeaks was a righteous truth-teller, rather than a front for any government or political party. U.S. intelligence said that WikiLeaks was being used by Russia's GRU. That assessment was confirmed by other Western intelligence agencies, including the British. Now, during the 2016 election, the Russian government conspired with WikiLeaks to influence U.S. elections by hacking accounts belonging to the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, and her advisor, John Podesta. The computer attacks on the Clinton campaign operatives were in fact considered federal crimes, and that is one of the indictments that came out as a result of the Mueller investigation. Under federal law, it is illegal to hack someone's email and social media accounts, and the Mueller investigation led to the Russians who were involved in the computer hacks being indicted under federal crimes, though since they're not in the U.S., it's unlikely that they will actually be prosecuted. And on June 14, 2016, the DNC announced its servers had been hacked, and that same day, Roger Stone called Donald Trump on Trump's personal telephone line. On August 2, 2016, Stone called Trump, and they chatted for 10 minutes. After that talk, Roger Stone then told conspiracy theorist and radio host Jerome Corsi to get someone in London to go talk to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks co-founder, who was then living in the Embassy of Ecuador while he fought extradition. Two days later on August 4th, Corsi sent Roger Stone an email informing him that Assange was planning two more document releases to damage Hillary Clinton. One of those releases would be in October to have maximum impact on the November election. Corsi told Stone that, quote, "hackers" were working to make it happen. During August, the Trump campaign staffer, Rick Gates, who later pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, had conversations with Stone about the WikiLeaks document releases. Gates was also present when Donald Trump had a telephone call with Stone. After the call, Trump told Gates more information was planned. Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, also convicted of federal crimes, heard Trump on the phone with Stone, who allegedly told Trump what WikiLeaks was doing. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, also convicted of federal crimes, told investigators that Donald Trump told him to keep in touch with Stone for more information about WikiLeaks. Now, despite Roger Stone's links to Donald Trump, the president claimed amnesia about whether he had any conversations with Stone during the summer of 2016. Shortly after telling Mueller's team that he couldn't remember any conversations in written answers, Donald Trump blasted witnesses that he perceived as flipping on him, and Trump praised Stone for his bravery in refusing to snitch on Trump and the Trump campaign. "The Mueller Report" noted that Trump's actions towards Stone support an inference that he was offering Stone and other witnesses rewards for not providing damaging testimony, rewards like pardons. After Trump tweeted about Stone's bravery and the treachery of snitches, Roger Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee. Those lies were particularly brazen. Roger Stone claimed he didn't have anything in writing pertaining to Assange. In reality, he had hundreds of documents. He said he got the information about WikiLeaks from talk show host Randy Credico, when actually he got the information from Jerome Corsi, and perhaps vice versa. This predictably sent investigators on a wild goose chase looking for information from Credico. The real intermediary, Corsi, never testified before the House Intelligence Committee, because potentially Stone lied and they didn't know about Corsi's involvement. Roger Stone also said he didn't have communications with anyone from the Trump campaign, when he actually talked with Manafort, Gates, Bannon, and Trump. And it turns out that Roger Stone also had email conversations with Corsi and Credico, despite telling Congress that he wasn't "an email guy." Now, as a federal judge noted when Stone was eventually sentenced, Stone obstructed Congress' ability to know what actually happened, and potentially led to the destruction of much of the material Roger Stone actually had in his possession. And Stone pressured Randy Credico to go along with Stone's made-up stories. On April 9, 2018 in an email chain about Stone's testimony, Roger Stone wrote to Credico, "I'm going to take that dog away from you. "Not a (bleep) thing you can do about it either, "because you are a weak, broke piece of (bleep)," and Stone also told Credico to, quote, "prepare to die." Now, although Credico said he did not believe Stone would actually steal his dog or hurt him directly, he was worried that Stone's comments would encourage others to hurt him and his family. Stone even suggested that those testifying regarding the WikiLeaks information should pull a Frank Pentangeli to prevent contradicting his earlier testimony. Pentangeli was a character from "The Godfather Part II" who lied to Congress about organized crime in order to save Don Corleone from a perjury charge. - I don't, I never knew no godfather. - Spoiler, the character later slits his wrists in prison. Now, eventually some of Stone's lies were discovered and the DOJ prosecuted him. During Stone's trial, the government admitted for the first time that Stone may have discussed WikiLeaks with Donald Trump during the summer of 2016. And Rick Gates testified that he was in the limousine with Trump on their way to LaGuardia Airport when Trump talked on the phone with Stone about the emails. This information was apparently redacted from "The Mueller Report," and was not made public until the Stone trial. It directly contradicts President Trump's statement to Robert Mueller that, quote, "I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with Stone, "nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed "WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign." Of course, it's not clear, and we may never know as to whether Stone was lying to prevent the information of the fact that the president had discussed the WikiLeaks email hacks before they were released, or whether there was more information that is not yet public that was even worse than this particular scandal. And now, Roger Stone has allegedly been rewarded with a commutation of his sentence. Now, I say allegedly, because there's some really weird stuff going on, and before we get into the actual pardon power, and what that means, and what the president can do to commute someone's sentence, and now questions have arisen as to whether President Trump's clemency covers only Roger Stone's prison time or also his probation, and the U.S. Probation Office has raised questions about the commutation itself. So, at the time of this video, no one has actually seen this supposed commutation of Roger Stone's sentence, and we don't actually know exactly what it covers. Now, apart from that legal weirdness, you'll also hear some individuals refer to the crimes that Roger Stone was convicted of as being mere process crimes, and therefore they're not really particularly important crimes. In fact, Senator Lindsey Graham has basically said that he's fine with a pardon, because Stone was merely convicted of process crimes. Generally, a process crime in this context is a pejorative used to say that the crime only came about as a result of the legal process itself. These include things like perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements, and failure to appear in court. Now, as a lawyer, I find this particularly galling, because process crimes can undermine the rule of law as much, if not more, than other, quote, "non-process crimes," because if you can get away with mucking around with the justice system itself, the justice system will stop working. Why is lying to law enforcement agents illegal when a person isn't under oath? Because it impedes the search for evidence and the truth. When witnesses lie, they obstruct the officer's ability to find evidence. Obstruction of justice obstructs justice. It's right there in the title. It lets witnesses manipulate the process in sending agents in the wrong direction and enabling the destruction of evidence itself. It's kind of hard to square the idea of being in favor of law and order if you are not in favor of these, quote, "process crimes," and thinking that people should be able to get away with lying to law enforcement agencies, obstructing justice, and intimidating witnesses. So let's talk about the formal constitutional pardon power. Donald Trump has long been obsessed with pardon power. He has stated that he more or less believes that it gives him unlimited constitutional authority to do people favors. He's even suggested that he could pardon himself, but what is the pardon power? Is Donald Trump right that it gives him total power to commute and pardon people for federal crimes? Well, under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the president was given the, quote, "power to grant reprieves and pardons "for offenses against the United States, "except in cases of impeachment." The Supreme Court case of Ex parte Garland established the contours of the president's pardon authority. Garland involved a presidential pardon given by President Andrew Johnson, who pardoned thousands of Confederate soldiers for their arguable crimes against America in participating in the Civil War. However, Congress then passed a law disbarring lawyers who were members of the Confederate government. Augustus Garland was a Confederate Senator and a lawyer who claimed that the law was a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law that punished him for a crime that he had already been pardoned for. The Supreme Court ruled for Garland, and this ruling established two key principles. First, the president has full power to pardon anyone of all federal crimes, either before, during or after prosecution. The pardon clears the individuals of any consequences that they may have arisen from the action from which they were being punished. And second, laws may not be established that would punish someone after the fact of the pardon. This prevents Congress from passing a law punishing someone who the president actually pardoned, and commutations are another power granted by Article II, Section 2, and that's what the reprieve referred to in the text refers to. Unlike pardons, which formally forgive the individual of the crimes and restore what may have been lost through the conviction, a commutation just ends the person's sentence. Roger Stone received a commutation, at least, allegedly. In the White House statement announcing the commutation, the White House indicated that a commutation was chosen rather than a pardon because Stone does not concede his guilt and will challenge his conviction on appeal. Now, the commutation of Stone's sentence has made a lot of people mad on both sides of the aisle, even including Andrew McCarthy, who writes for the "National Review," which is incredibly conservative, and incredibly pro-Trump. - He got caught up in a very politicized investigation. - And when you lose Andrew McCarthy, you can bet that your actions are pretty far outside the Overton window. So as a result, a lot of people have started talking about limits on the president's pardon power. And in fact, there are some limits on the president's powers. And since the constitutional text only mentions reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, the president can only pardon people for federal criminal acts. People convicted of violating state law can only seek clemency from their governors. The pardon power also has nothing to do with civil cases. The president cannot remove federal civil liability for things like damages. There's also a legal consensus that the president cannot pardon himself after he has been impeached and removed. Theoretically, the president can only pardon someone for crimes that have already occurred. In other words, the president cannot pardon people for a conspiracy that is still in process and ongoing. This was established in Ex parte Garland because the decision specified that the power may be exercised at any time after the commission of a crime. We could get into a deep argument here about whether Roger Stone's crimes against the United States are actually part of an ongoing conspiracy with President Trump and others, but that would probably lead us back to the text of Article II, Section 2. What does it mean that the president's power to pardon is limited by impeachment? You might recall that the pardon clause says that the president has the "power to grant reprieves "and pardons for offenses against the United States, "except in cases of impeachment." It simply says impeachment, rather than impeachment and conviction. And traditionally, we have assumed that the phrase except in cases of impeachment means that a president cannot use the pardon to stop an impeachment. This has been the prevailing view for hundreds of years, mostly due to a book written by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in 1833. But detractors of this theory point out that Story did not have Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, which are considered some of the most important sources of information for what the framers actually thought. And Story's interpretation gives significant weight to the way that pardon power was used in English common law. Under this view, President Trump obviously could not pardon himself to stop the House from impeaching him. However, there are two other interpretations of this clause that have become relevant recently. First, it could mean that the president's pardon power is suspended after the House votes to impeach. James Madison felt that a strong Congress would realize that the president was conspiring to commit treason, impeach, and remove him for it, averting the crisis. Madison said, quote, "If the president be connected "in any suspicious manner with any persons "and there be to believe he will shelter himself, "the House of Representatives can impeach him. "They can suspend him when suspected, "and the power of pardoning will devolve "to the vice-president." Now, a second interpretation of the text, also drawn from Madison's words, is that the president can't pardon people connected with the articles of impeachment. Here, the emphasis is on the first part of Madison's quote, "If the president be connected in any suspicious manner "with any persons." So, does this mean that the president cannot pardon people with whom he conspired? Well, while it's possible that the Supreme Court could interpret the pardon clause that way, odds are the Supreme Court would probably say that the president has that kind of power, even though that seems like a pretty reasonable limit on presidential pardon power. In truth, the Supreme Court is likely to find that that's just a political question, and that if people aren't happy with the president pardoning co-conspirators, then they can simply vote him out of office or the House and Senate can vote to impeach him out of office for the act of the pardon itself. While it's true that the text does not say impeachment and conviction, this interpretation has never been tried in court, and Madison and other drafters of the Constitution offered impeachment as a compromise, a way of checking the president's executive powers. But the impeachment process has been used so sparingly that we just don't know exactly what the drafters of the Constitution thought and how it should be applied in these particular circumstances, and it's unlikely that the Supreme Court is going to seriously curtail the president's pardon power, which has been used a lot more frequently than the impeachment. So, given that this doesn't sound great, is there anything that we can do about it? The short answer is not really. The only real check on pardon power is through impeachment. The Democrats could argue that Trump's use of the pardon power is in this case impeachable itself, and try to argue that Republicans in the Senate should vote to convict and remove him from power. But that seems incredibly unlikely. And rather than going through another round of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to pass legislation limiting the president's pardon powers. - This is an abuse of power that the president is, again, trying to manipulate federal law enforcement to serve his political interest. - Her proposal tracks the suggestion of legal scholars who believe that the word impeachment should mean that the president's co-conspirators shouldn't get a pardon or reprieve. But if Congress passes a law limiting the president's constitutional powers, it would probably be unconstitutional, if the Supreme Court doesn't believe that that interpretation of the pardon clause is accurate. Remember, the Constitution trumps any law that Congress can pass. So, in reality, it would probably require a constitutional amendment to change the meaning of that text. Now, Roger Stone may be a dirty trickster, and he may have conspired with WikiLeaks, who may have conspired with the Russian GRU to destroy our democracy, but all of this could have been avoided if the DNC had used a little email security. Now, we should all back up our files, but to back them up without security is almost as bad as asking the Russians to hack your political opponent. - Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. - Which is why you should use Backblaze for backing up your files. All of Backblaze's files are stored on their secure data centers with 24 hour staff, biometric security, and redundant power. Backblaze is a cloud storage solution that's both easy to use and affordable, starting at just $6 per month. They've restored over 50 billion files, and they've got over an exabyte of data storage. You can back up almost anything, and you can restore your files anywhere. Their mobile apps give you access to your files on the go, so you can directly download them, or you can even restore your files by mail. Just purchase a restore via hard drive, and they will overnight FedEx it to you. And after you restore all of your data to another device, you can then return the hard drive to them for a refund. Backblaze has unlimited data backup at a fixed price, and you can receive a fully featured 15 day trial at backblaze.com/legaleagle. Again, you can back up unlimited data for free by clicking on the link in the description, or going to backblaze.com/legaleagle, and clicking on that link really helps out this channel. So, do you agree with my analysis? Should we amend the Constitution to remove the president's pardon power? Leave your objections in the comments, and check out this playlist over here with all of my other analyses about legal issues raised by COVID, Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and so much more, unfortunately. So, click on this playlist, and I'll see you in court.
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Channel: LegalEagle
Views: 477,324
Rating: 4.8261967 out of 5
Keywords: Legaleagle, legal eagle, breaking news, case, congress, court case, crime, guilty, jury, latest news, news, not guilty, political, politics, politics news, scotus, supreme court, the trial, trial, Verdict, copyright, law advice, legal analysis, lawyer, attorney, Real lawyer, Real law review, stone pardon, roger stone, roger stone pardon, trump, trump roger stone, trump pardon, president trump, robert mueller
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Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)
Published: Mon Jul 20 2020
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