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