Pardons need not be revisited. The possibility of a Pardon is the ONLY hope for those imprisoned or facing execution who are actually innocent. Actual innocence is not a ground for appeal, and it is often not used to grant a new trial if the defendant entered a "best interest" plea to, say, avoid the Death Penalty, settle for 25 years rather than 70 years, etc.
I'm fine with commutation of this sentence. Stone deserves a new trial due to bias issues with the jury foreperson, but one isn't forthcoming due to the bias of an activist Obama appointee. We can't all be Maximum John Sirica, a conservative Republican who stuck it to Watergate defendants, now can we?
There's a difference between a case a POTUS has absolutely no connection to, and what happened here. This was clearly a pardon done with corrupt intent -- to show Stone, and any past or future collaborator, that there are rewards for taking one for the President. And that is a message that will reverberate throughout the future, enabling corruption in Republican and Democratic administrations yet to come. This will have to be rectified if America is to continue to be a country governed by laws.
Honestly, I'm baffled that people here think this is OK, that this is just the way it is, and that an earnest attempt to undergird our fundamental laws and values is just a "waste" of "political capital". You guys are a bunch of jokers. Seriously, its embarrassing.
What’s embarrassing is your out of touch take. The public didn’t care about Manafort and that was pre virus. They will not care about Stone with high unemployment, lack of clarity about schools and general virus fears. Newsflash, trumps shenanigans are already baked in at this point into the public’s opinion of him. Who’s flipping their vote after sticking with trump 3.5 years because of stone? Pontificating about America’s future as a nation just distracts from what will actually change the future - the campaign and election.
