The real reason Donald Trump likely won’t bother trying to pardon Roger Stone
Donald Trump has become so erratic, corrupt, and desperate, it can be tricky to predict his next moves with any degree of certainty. But Trump is still a creature of habit, and he still only cares about the things he cares about. For that reason, it’s fair to expect that Trump probably won’t try to pardon his oldest friend Roger Stone.
There are three reasons why Donald Trump hasn’t tried to pardon any of his underlings who have been charged or convicted in his scandals. First, if Trump uses a pardon on an alleged co-conspirator, it’ll trigger a court battle over pardon powers in general which could result in a ruling which would prevent Trump from being able to pardon his own family on his way out the door. Is Trump willing to risk seeing his kids rot in prison just so he can bail out someone like Paul Manafort or Roger Stone? Of course not.
Second, Trump can only even try to pardon people on federal charges. We’ve seen New York bring state level charges against Manafort as a way of ensuring that a Trump pardon of Manafort wouldn’t help him any. Roger Stone’s primary residence is in Florida, where the corrupt Republican State Attorney General will not pursue criminal charges against him. But the Mueller probe made a point of also raiding Stone’s secondary residence in New York, thus opening the door for New York to bring state charges against Stone if necessary.
Third, if Donald Trump pardoned Roger Stone and it worked, and no state charges happened, and Stone became a free man, it would result in Stone no longer facing any kind of criminal jeopardy. This would then require Stone to testify against Donald Trump, because you can only invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating yourself, not to avoid incriminating your friend. By pardoning Stone, Trump could be creating a reluctant star witness against him. Trump will do whatever he’ll do – there’s a reason he hasn’t tried to pardon any of his co-conspirators to date.
