By commuting Stone’s sentence, Trump is telling others who might commit crimes on his behalf that he’s got their backAt America’s birth, when delegates in Virginia were debating whether to ratify the Constitution, a politician called George Mason had an objection. Mason, who was influential over the development of the Bill of Rights, wondered whether the presidential pardon power was too broad. Might not the president encourage people who worked for him to commit crimes, and then pardon them? If he could, there would be essentially no check on a president’s power to break the law. Given that sort of leeway, an unscrupulous president could “establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic.”Mason’s objection ought to concern us still today. Late on Friday, Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of his long-time associate Roger Stone, all but guaranteeing that Stone will never face justice for crimes he committed while obstructing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with WikiLeaks and the Russian intelligence agencies who attempted to tip the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Backlash to the decision has been swift, with Trump’s fellow Republican Mitt Romney condemning the president’s “unprecedented, historic corruption”. Continue reading...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/11/roger-stone-has-escaped-punishment-for-his-crimes-trump-is-sending-a-signal