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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're going to commute the sentence of your old friend who got convicted of a bunch of felonies after trying to help you get elected, it's best to do it late on a Friday night. That's when President Trump commuted Roger Stone's sentence. Clearly not one of his prouder moments as president, or in the words of Republican Senator Mitt Romney, quote, unprecedented, historic corruption. An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president. On today's show, we're going to explain why this commutation matters more than most, maybe more than all of them. And we're going to start with the story of Roger Stone because it kind of perfectly builds to this moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here's Vox reporter Andrew Prokop from an episode we made a while back called The Man with the Nixon Tattoo. So Roger Stone. Roger Jason Stone. Roger Jason Stone Jr. Roger Jason Stone Jr. Self-proclaimed dirty trickster. Donald Trump's albino assassin, Roger Stone. Roger. Now, you don't mind that I call you his albino assassin, do you? No, comrade. I mean, Bill. What you have to understand about Roger Stone is that he's more than just an advisor to Donald Trump or a guy who just got indicted by Robert Mueller. He's kind of a legendary figure in Republican politics. And in the style of a good origin story for a supervillain, it goes all the way back to Watergate. Stone was 19 years old in 1972, and he was a huge fan of Richard Nixon volunteering for the Nixon campaign. And that's when he did his—he now proudly takes credit for his first dirty trick.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There was a Republican congressman who was challenging Nixon in the primaries. So Stone sent this challenger phony donations that he said were from the Young Socialist Alliance. I got an enormous mason jar, filled it with pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters. I brought it to the McCluskey headquarters. I said, hi, I'm from the Young Socialist Alliance. I want to donate this and I need a receipt. They were so dumb, they gave me one. And then he leaked it to the press. So it looked like Nixon's challenger was being funded by young socialists. This came to light during the congressional investigations into Watergate around 1974. And that was Stone's real first brush with national infamy. He lost his job. He was then working for Senator Bob Dole. But it's hard to keep Roger Stone down. And Stone has been completely unashamed of his involvement with Nixon. And even later in his life, got a prominent tattoo of Richard Nixon's face on his back. And it's real. I checked. It's real and it's spectacular.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You loved Richard Nixon? I think I have a balanced view of him. And over the next few years, he was kind of centrally positioned among various big picture trends in the development of American politics. Like he co-founded one of the first well-funded outside campaign money groups that would just bombard candidates with negative ads. This was back in 1975. He backed Ronald Reagan early during his 1976 presidential campaign, which failed, and then the 1980 campaign that he actually won. Stone was Reagan's political director for the Northeast. And his shtick at the time was trying to convince working class voters who had traditionally backed Democrats to support Reagan instead. And then after Reagan won, Stone decided to cash in. He and his friend Paul Manafort and various other connected Reagan world people started what became a kind of infamous lobbying and public relations firm, Black Manafort and Stone.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The argument, I gather, seems to be that you helped elect them. Now you're helping to tell them what to do, and this really isn't what the founding fathers had in mind. First of all, the term influence shops is really not accurate at all. I think what we provide for our clients, be them foreign countries or corporations or individuals, is a superior understanding of how Washington works. Black Manafort and Stone was kind of viewed as one of the most ethically questionable lobbying firms in D.C. They would have no problem representing really brutal dictators or violent opposition movements alongside their mainstream corporate clients. So it was back in 1985 that one magazine profile of Roger Stone called him the state Washington sleazeball I revel in your hatred because if I weren't effective, you wouldn't hate me.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When you're talking about him in the 80s and becoming this Washington sleazeball, you don't get a title like that without being, I guess, in some ways successful. How big a lobbyist does he become with Black, Manafort, Stone? Well, so in 1985, Stone was then 32 years old and he was reportedly making $450,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that would be more than a million dollars today. He kept working with Republicans. He worked on George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, worked for Bob Dole in 1996. And his relationship with Donald Trump goes back a really long time, goes back to the 80s. He started advising Trump and Stone actually tried to get Trump to run for president in 1988. Wow. So – OG Trump supporter. So he's been trying to make this happen for a long time.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Through all this time, Stone was considered a very respectable pillar of the Republican Party establishment in Washington. But there was a little curveball there. Something changed in 1996. That's when he was advising Bob Dole's presidential campaign. And then the National Enquirer revealed that Roger Stone and his wife, Nikki, have advertised the story is on the Internet and in some swinger magazines looking for kinky group sex partners. At least he's not cheating on his wife. At the time, Stone claimed, you know, this was a setup. Someone was playing a dirty trick on him, but he had to resign from the Dole campaign. And he eventually acknowledged that the ads really were his. And so the scandal kind of put a pall over his career for a while. It forced him out of basically any high-level mainstream Republican role. But Stone never really went away entirely. He would just keep popping up at odd moments in politics.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Like in 2000, during the Florida recount battle, Stone tried to take credit for orchestrating demonstrations that helped shut down the recount, which is what the Bush campaign wanted to happen at the time. There's also the downfall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Stone had some kind of big feud with Spitzer and Spitzer was of course eventually resigned after a prostitution scandal. And Stone later claimed that he may have helped tip off investigators about Spitzer's habits because he said he had heard about them. So does it take Donald Trump to bring this sort of disgraced sex party having millionaire back into the political fold like mainstream GOP politics? Basically, Roger Stone and Donald Trump seemed to be a perfect match when Trump launched his presidential campaign for real this time in June 2015.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump was not very well liked by the Republican Party establishment. So it was not particularly plausible that he would land a top level Republican operative to help advise or run his campaign. So Stone, who had been somewhat discredited but also who Trump had had a decades-long relationship with, seemed like the perfect choice. And he did officially join the Trump campaign as an advisor. But he didn't last there long. He clashed with other staffers, including Corey Lewandowski, and announced that he would resign from the Trump campaign in August 2015. But then there are questions about whether he ever truly left Trump's orbit. The indictment from Mueller alleges that Roger Stone maintained regular contact with the Trump campaign throughout the 2016 election. There have been reports that he remained in touch with Trump personally. And, of course, he put together this operation of outside groups to back Trump and was a major supporter of Trump in the press.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What's the nature of their friendship? Well, Stone did work for him and became like a kind of political advisor for him and may have advised his company on some things too. But he was mainly Donald Trump's political guru for a long time. This is not the Republicans versus the Democrats. This is the elites of the Republican and Democratic Party who have driven this country into the ditch versus Donald J. Trump and the rest of America. We are on the verge of making America great again. Thank you. When you look at photos of Roger Stone from the 80s, he kind of looks like he could be Donald Trump's cousin or something like that. They both kind of have, like, you know, the same suits, the same hair. They seem to have, like, the same taste. Is there some sort of like symbiotic thing about their relationship?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think what's clear is that there is a kind of mind meld between Stone and Trump. It's not clear how much of this is Stone's influence versus just the fact that they happen to think alike. But they seem to have the exact same theory of politics, which is to use fear, negativity, dirty tricks, mobilize your own base, demonize the other side. Like, this is the Trump playbook, and Stone has been using this in Republican politics for decades before Trump even got involved. Does Roger Stone have a political ideology? I mean, you talk about him being around since Nixon, supporting Reagan, supporting Bush, Dole, Trump. It seems like if you're a Republican, he'll support you. But then when you talk about the lobbying he's done, it seems like he'll just sell his services to the highest bidder.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What does this guy believe in I think Roger Stone believes in winning He believes in making a name for himself politically His style of politics is very focused on manipulating the media and doing stunts to get attention and also dirty tricks which he has proudly embraced that reputation of kind of the senior side of politics He told The New Yorker in 2008, politics is not about uniting people. It's about dividing people and getting your 51%. He told The Weekly Standard that for him, politics is performance art.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the break, Roger Stone wins. The United States loses. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more. Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community. And Built wants you to go out and do things in the community. You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained. Thank you. Today, today explain. Andrew Prokop, remind us what Roger Stone was ultimately convicted of.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Roger Stone was convicted of one count of obstructing an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements to Congress, and one count of witness tampering, all related to a congressional effort to investigate what happened between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. And way back in February, we talked to you about the sentencing of Roger Stone in our 500th episode called Between a Stone and a Hard Place, because the president made that controversial too, right?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Yes. So the attorney general did. It hasn't been proven, so to speak, that Trump ordered what Bill Barr did. But what happened was that the prosecutors who had handled Stone's case submitted one sentencing recommendation and got it approved. And then the Justice Department pulled it back at Attorney General Bill Barr's request, a highly unusual move to offer a weaker sentencing recommendation. But what ended up happening there was that the judge in Stone's case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced him to 40 months in prison, three years and four months. And Stone was supposed to report to prison to begin serving that sentence on Tuesday of this week. And then late Friday night, he's told he doesn't have to show.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Exactly. So there had been this guessing game and discussion in the media among Trump allies about whether Trump would save Stone from going to prison. Hardly a surprise, but it's still a new line that Trump has crossed that he hasn't before. He has used his pardon power or commutation power in this case in all sorts of politically controversial ways, but he has never gone so far as to pardon or commute the sentence of a defendant in the Mueller investigation. An investigation that was in part into Trump's own conduct. And so we have to remember what the crimes Stone was convicted of were actually about. They were about trying to cover up the truth of what happened between him and WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They were about what he told Trump advisors about WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked emails about the Democratic candidates that related to Hillary Clinton during that campaign. And so he was really prosecuted and convicted for trying to cover up for Donald Trump, whether it was just to help Trump politically or to cover up some more damaging information that we still don't know was never resolved. What justification did President Trump furnish for commuting this sentence for crimes related to his own campaign?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, witch hunt, collusion, etc., etc. Trump has, you know, tried to delegitimize the entire Mueller investigation or anything that touched it or stemmed from it. And so he has just portrayed the entire thing as bogus. And the White House press secretary released a statement that was reportedly crafted by Trump himself that said that Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia hoax that the left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump presidency.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There was never any collusion between the Trump campaign or the Trump administration with Russia. So Trump is basically saying you could never prove collusion between me and Russia or Roger Stone and Russia, which is true. They never did manage to prove that. But whether they didn't prove that or something like it, in part because of the many lies that Roger Stone orchestrated during these investigations, isn't clear. If this was such a witch hunt and such a hoax, why didn't the president just go ahead and fully pardon Roger Stone because these felony convictions now will still be on his record, right?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He is a guilty felon for the rest of his life. Exactly. What Trump did by commuting Stone's sentence was preventing him from having to report to prison this week. And the reason for that is probably just political. This was a political calculation Trump would like in an ideal world to probably pardon anyone associated with the Mueller investigation in any way. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, maybe not Michael Cohen, since their relationship isn't so good these days. But, you know, if there were no political constraints on Trump, he would probably go full pardon. So this is a way to protect Stone, to save him from reporting to prison. But he didn't go all the way because he may think that there would be less backlash politically if he doesn't do a full pardon, if he just does a commutation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I don't know if that's right, because there is a whole lot of backlash from this. So, of course, Democrats condemned Trump's behavior here as a grave affront to the rule of law and questioned what he was covering up. And then there were the comments of Mitt Romney. And in addition to Romney, Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania also publicly criticized Trump's move, calling it a mistake, noting that even Attorney General Bill Barr called this a righteous prosecution and the sentencing fair.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Even more interesting than that was that former special counsel Robert Mueller broke his silence on all this by writing an op-ed to be published in the Washington Post, basically defending his investigation and saying that... I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president himself didn't pardon Stone. He commuted his sentence and he did it late on a Friday, right on the cusp of Stone reporting to prison. Why do it at all at this point? I mean, a pardon or a commutation this ugly and self-serving seems like it would usually come in a lame duck presidency. And if this is President Trump in July 2020, what does it say for what he might do in a second term? That's the issue here. This is politically constrained Trump. This is Trump when he is still facing an election in November. But once that happens, the gloves are off. Either way, either Trump has won his second term and he can serve it out. He perhaps may not want to be impeached again, but, you know, it's already happened once and he survived.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I don't know whether he would be so worried about that. Or if he loses, he has two and a half months where he's still in office in the lame duck session. And he could get up to all sorts of shenanigans with this pardon and clemency power. You know, we've seen other presidents use this power to give clemency to people who either served in their administration or close associates involved in scandals. This isn't exactly unprecedented, but when you combine it with everything else President Trump has been doing to try to co-opt the Justice Department, to make it serve his political interests, to make it protect him and his friends, to make it go after his enemies, that is a trend that will be really scary to watch if he wins a second term.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a chance he commuted Stone's sentence because he wants Stone's help in his campaign for a second term? I would think there are a lot of eyes on Roger Stone right now. And he might, after having narrowly escaped hard time here, he might not want to court that consequence again. But this is Roger Stone we're talking about. He is legendary for his political dark arts, and Roger Stone somehow manages to turn up in practically every controversial moment in recent political history, so his story may not be over.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find all Andrew Prokop's reporting on Roger Stone's story so far at vox.com.
