Legal Experts Explode Over Donald Trump's Clemency For Roger Stone

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called it "the most corrupt and cronyistic act in perhaps all of recent history." Many other legal experts agreed.
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Legal experts joined the cascade of criticism and anger being directed at Donald Trump on Friday after the president commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his longtime adviser.

CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin described Trump’s granting of clemency to Stone ― who was soon set to begin a 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election ― as “the most corrupt and cronyistic act in perhaps all of recent history.”

Disgraced former President “Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate never pardoned or commuted the sentences of any of the people involved in Watergate,” Toobin told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “He thought he could never get away with it.”

Check out the clip here:

“This is what corruption looks like,” former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN’s Don Lemon. “This is just a raw abuse of power.”

Check out Honig’s comments here:

Attorney George Conway, who is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, suggested there had never been “a more openly, brazenly corrupt act” committed by a president of the United States:

Joyce White Vance, a law professor at the University of Alabama, tweeted Trump had “undermined the rule of law & our justice system to try to avoid whatever tales Stone might have to tell on him.”

Prosecutors were “heartsick over this miscarriage of justice,” she said:

“Trump has no shame whatsoever,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti:

And former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner described the act as “a GUT PUNCH to EVERY SINGLE DEFENDANT” in the U.S. “who is serving a sentence but is not a rich, white friend or criminal associate” of the president.

It “spits in the face of the jury,” he added:

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