Legal expert: Donald Trump has “given up on reelection” with Roger Stone commutation

| 10:30 pm EDT July 10, 2020
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Donald Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence this evening in response to a public thinly veiled threat that Stone made about the criminal dirt he has on Trump. When the news broke, Palmer Report wrote that Trump was harming his already-weak reelection prospects with this move, and that Trump clearly cares more about keeping Stone quiet than he does about winning.

It turns out we’re not the only ones who see it that way. Daniel Goldman, former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, and current NBC News legal analyst, tweeted this:

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Goldman is entirely correct. There are no magic wands involved in what Donald Trump is doing here. This isn’t complicated. Trump was simply faced with the no-win choice of doing nothing and letting Stone leak criminal dirt on him, or harming his reelection prospects in order to keep Stone quiet. Trump chose the latter – and now his path to reelection grows even narrower.

If Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone pisses you off, we suggest channeling that anger into focusing on things like voter registration and voter turnout. Let’s make sure Joe Biden wins by as large of a margin as possible, so as not to leave any room for error.