Roger Stone is still totally screwed

| 9:30 pm EDT July 10, 2020
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Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone this evening, after Stone strongly hinted to NBC News that he was going to give up criminal dirt on Trump. This keeps Stone out of prison for now – but it’s just the very beginning of an ugly and protracted battle that will likely land Stone in prison in the end, and will certainly ruin the rest of his life.

For starters, it’s nearly a given that this commutation will be challenged in court. When Roger Stone openly blackmailed Donald Trump into doing it this evening, he helped increase the odds of the courts striking down this commutation. There was already a constitutional question as to whether a president could pardon or commute his alleged co-conspirator. Now there will be a constitutional question about whether a president can pardon or commute someone who is openly blackmailing him into doing it.

Even if the commutation stands, if Trump loses the election, the DOJ will simply bring the rest of the criminal charges against Stone that were blocked by Bill Barr. Some of those charges appeared to be more serious than the seven charges that Stone has been convicted on, meaning Stone could end up with a longer prison sentence than the three-plus years he was facing.

Finally, even though Roger Stone’s primary residence is in Florida, he also maintains an apartment in New York City, which law enforcement raided on the day he was arrested. When it came to Paul Manafort, New York secretly had a sealed criminal case lined up against him all along, and waited to unveil it until shortly after Manafort’s federal trial and sentencing was complete. Is there a New York criminal case waiting in the wings against Roger Stone as well?

The point is that Roger Stone isn’t off the hook. Yes, it’ll take time and a lot of legal rigamarole to finally get him in prison where he belongs. But Donald Trump’s commutation doesn’t apply to any prison sentence that Stone might receive as a result of any future criminal trials, and Trump can’t pardon state charges. Stone will go down in the end – and Donald Trump will have severely damaged his reelection prospects for nothing.