Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested Monday night that President Donald Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence to prevent his former adviser from revealing what happened during the 2016 election.
Stone blackmailed the president, forcing Trump into commuting the longtime GOP operative’s sentence or risk having his former confidante turn on him, Clinton told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Monday night.
“Well, I think it’s pretty clear that Stone threatened him,” Clinton said. “He probably threatened him privately, but he also threatened him publicly about what he would say if he had to go to prison, and this is a continuation of the cover-up.”
Trump commuted Stone’s sentence on July 11, days before he began serving out a nearly 4-year prison stint.
“So, what [the president] did was to use the awesome power of commutation, as part of the pardon power of the president, to basically shut up Roger Stone so that Roger Stone would not spill any more beans about what actually happened and how much Donald Trump actually knew,” Clinton concluded.
A jury convicted Stone in November on five counts of making false statements to Congress, as well as obstructing a congressional probe and witness tampering. He was charged with lying to lawmakers in 2017 when he denied speaking to WikiLeaks about emails stolen from Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Stone’s alleged contact with Wikileaks and Julian Assange was the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling. His critics argue that Stone was in direct contact with Assange during Trump’s 2016 campaign, and helped WikiLeaks release damaging information on Clinton.
Trump’s re-election campaign has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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