President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of his longtime political confidant Roger Stone, intervening in extraordinary fashion in a criminal case that was central to the Russia investigation and that concerned the president’s own conduct.
The move came just days before Stone was to begin serving a 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
(The Associated Press, July 11, 2020)
Alas, this is just the latest example of Trump doing his damndest to transform America into a Banana Republic; you know, where the president behaves like a Mafia Don. And, because Republican leaders have continually enabled his mob-like behavior, Trump has been emboldened, instead of chastened, by Democrats – who have tried to no avail to keep his corruption of the presidency in check.
I mean, it’s hardly news that – as it was when it came to impeaching Trump – Mitt Romney is the only high-profile Republican now condemning him:
Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 11, 2020
Truth be told, the only interesting thing about this development is the extent to which Attorney General William Barr went to let the media know that he opposed this commutation.
After all, this is the same Barr who, time and again, has blithely flouted norms and laws to do Trump’s bidding. His misdeeds have been open and notorious, ranging from lying about the findings of the Mueller Report to ordering federal troops to trample over peaceful protesters. The latter, of course, was done to clear a path for Trump’s infamous church-front, bible-holding photo-op.
More to the point, though, Barr, at this very moment, is trying to bully a federal judge into dismissing a criminal case against another longtime political confidant Michael Flynn. Not to mention this prison trap he pulled on Michael Cohen at Trump’s behest on Friday:
After spending the past several weeks on New York’s tony Upper East Side, Michael Cohen has found himself back in federal prison after a dispute with the government over what his lawyers say were restrictions in paperwork designed to prevent him from finishing a book about the president. … Defense attorneys and legal experts that CNN spoke with Friday said that the form appeared to be tailored to Cohen. …
Cohen was released under a Bureau of Prisons program after meeting certain criteria spelled out by the agency regarding the amount of time he’d served and his vulnerability to the virus
(CNN, July 10, 2020)
Therefore, imagine Trump’s indignation. Hell, Barr is behaving like the accomplice who sets out with an arsonist to burn down a house, but then gets a garden hose to try in vain to save one friggin’ room.
No, Mr. Barr, redemption, if possible, will require far more than this.
Related commentaries:
photo-op… Mueller Report… Mitt Romney…
Michael Cohen… Michael Flynn…