Robert Mueller came out of his reserve. Less than 24 hours after the White House announced that Donald Trump had commuted the sentence for his friend Roger Stone, the former independent prosecutor responsible for investigating Russian interference in the 2000 presidential campaign, published on Saturday July 11, a text in the Washington Post to defend his investigation. Roger Stone has been found guilty, he said. “There remains a convicted criminal and rightfully so. "
The president’s former private counselor was scheduled to go to jail on July 14 to serve a 40-month sentence, which he was sentenced in February, for lying to Congress five times, and for witness bribery. Defending his decision on Saturday, Trump said the sentence was " unfair " and that Roger Stone was the victim of a " illegal witch hunt ”.
A central figure in the survey
Robert Mueller, who is known for his reservations about commenting on the findings of his April 2019 report, said in his gallery that Roger Stone was one of the central figures in his investigation for two reasons. "He entered into communication in 2016 with individuals whom we identified as Russian intelligence officers and he claimed to have had prior knowledge of the spread by WikiLeaks of the emails stolen by these Russian officers. " The emails were from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. Their disclosure has harmed the campaign of the Democratic candidate.
The investigation, which lasted twenty-two months, showed that Roger Stone, a friend of more than twenty years of Mr. Trump, had "Lied to Congress about the identity of his intermediary with WikiLeaks, prosecutor Mueller continues. Lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. Lied by denying having contacted Trump's campaign on the WikiLeaks revelation schedule. In fact, he constantly kept them informed of senior campaign officials. And he urged a witness to obstruct " at the request of Congress.
In November 2019, the jury had pronounced the guilt of Roger Stone, a man who claimed to be himself a specialist in crooked strokes and wears on his back a tattoo with the effigy of Richard Nixon which he is not afraid to show to the cameras. Trump immediately announced his intention to get him out of business, in defiance of the principle of the separation of powers. After the verdict, he published tweets on tweets to denounce the recommendations of prosecutors (between seven and nine years in prison). When Justice Minister William Barr demanded a lighter sentence (between three and four years), he congratulated him. The four prosecutors in charge of the case preferred to resign.
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