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Donald Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone gushed over his political allies during an interview on Fox News on Monday, his first major television appearance since the president commuted Stone’s prison sentence on Friday.Stone had been convicted of seven felony counts – including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering in the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election – and was sentenced to more than three years in jail. The president, in defending his commutation, said Stone was treated “very unfairly”.The commutation was met with widespread criticism from Democrats and several Republicans, including Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey and Utah senator Mitt Romney, who called it an act of “historic corruption”.Stone appeared on the Monday night interview show with Fox News’s Sean Hannity alongside his lawyer, David Schoen. “I have deep, deep affection for Donald Trump because I’ve known him for 40 years,” Stone said. “He’s a man of great justice and fairness, he’s a man of enormous courage … He saved my life. And, at least on paper, he gave me a chance to fight for vindication.”On Saturday, special counsel Robert Mueller spoke out publicly for the first time in a year to defend his investigation against criticism from Trump and his supporters.“We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities,” Mueller wrote. “The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”Stone has consistently denied any wrongdoing and argued that the investigation was a sham.“I had a biased judge, I had a stacked jury, I had a corrupt jury forewoman,” Stone said, going on to thank Hannity and a host of public conservative figures including General Mike Flynn and Tucker Carlson. “And also Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida who I hope to live long enough to live in the White House.”Stone used his interview with Hannity to argue that the prison sentence would have effectively been a death sentence because of his ongoing asthma and the multiple inmates with Covid-19 cases.“I’m 67 years old, I’ve had lifelong respiratory problems,” Stone said.At another point in the interview, Stone said prosecutors wanted to use Stone to fuel an impeachment effort against the president.“They wanted me to be the ham in their ham sandwich because they knew the Mueller report, particularly on Russia, it was a dud. It was a goose egg,” Stone said. The Mueller report did not conclude that Trump directly coordinated with Russia or obstructed justice but it did not absolve him completely. The report did, however, argue that Trump may have played a role in Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, Trump himself has argued that the fact that the report did not completely implicate him means he is innocent and the investigation is just an effort to undermine his presidency. Mueller himself has pushed back on that and noted that Trump could be charged after he left office.Schoen spoke only briefly during the interview and, like his client, thanked Trump.“This commutation was a great tribute to President Trump,” Schoen said, saying the president was “sending the message that the Mueller team was rotten to the core”. “The president saved a life here.”Trump called Stone on Friday after commuting his sentence, a call Stone told ABC News was a “normal conversation” and “brief”.Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser to the president, was due to begin his sentence this week. The commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions but allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes. More
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Trump has claimed he received ‘rave reviews’ for commuting the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his long-time ally. Stone, 67, was convicted in November 2019 of obstructing a congressional investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Both Democrats and Republicans have criticised the move as a miscarriage of justice
Trump’s commutation of ally Roger Stone’s sentence sparks outrage
‘Historic corruption’: Republicans and Democrats react to Trump’s Stone ruling
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State is latest to roll back reopening efforts
Officials release Trump’s clemency order for Roger Stone
Fauci sidelined as White House steps up briefing campaign
Texas: 30-year-old dies after attending ‘coronavirus party’
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Key events
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5.29pm EDT17:29
‘Shame on you!’: protester interrupts Florida governor
5.18pm EDT17:18
Fact check on Trump’s false ‘mortality rate’ comments
4.55pm EDT16:55
Judge blocks Georgia’s anti-abortion law
4.32pm EDT16:32
Today so far
4.03pm EDT16:03
California shuts down indoor operations of many recently reopened businesses
3.43pm EDT15:43
Roger Stone’s clemency order by Trump released
3.06pm EDT15:06
Trump falsely claims he’s getting ‘rave reviews’ for Stone commutation
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5.29pm EDT17:29
‘Shame on you!’: protester interrupts Florida governor
As Florida governor Ron DeSantis started his update on the worsening Covid crisis in his state just now, a protester in a mask interrupted, shouting: “You are misleading the public. You are blaming the protesters. You guys have no plan, and you are doing nothing. Shame on you!” Watch here:
WFLA NEWS
(@WFLA)
‘SHAME ON YOU!’A protester just interrupted Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida coronavirus update, yelling that he’s doing nothing and is lying as coronavirus cases surge. https://t.co/yLokMuiUrp pic.twitter.com/tMYRSuQhhm
July 13, 2020
The protest comes one day after Florida broke the national record for the largest single-day increase in positive coronavirus cases in any state since the beginning of the pandemic, adding more than 15,000 cases as its daily average death toll continued to also rise.
DeSantis has said that even with the rising rates and growing safety concerns, he still wants schools to reopen as scheduled next month. The governor also recently downplayed the help his state was receiving from the state of New York for supplies, even though records show his aides thanking New York officials.
5.18pm EDT17:18
Fact check on Trump’s false ‘mortality rate’ comments
As the Covid-19 crisis dramatically worsens across the US, Trump has continued to share the falsehood that the US has “one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere”:
Robert Mackey
(@RobertMackey)
Someone in the White House press corps needs to directly ask Trump why he keeps saying the US mortality rate for Covid-19, which is among the 10 highest in the world, is the lowest, and why he keeps saying the 1918 pandemic was in 1917. https://t.co/fAxpZUXXbo
July 13, 2020
In fact, there are at least 14 countries that have lower death rates than the US, according to CNN, when looking at the 20 countries most affected by the virus. Experts told the network the fatality rate of around 4.5% in the US was the sixth highest in the world – a death toll more than twice as high as Brazil, with the second-highest toll.
Updated
at 5.32pm EDT
4.55pm EDT16:55
Judge blocks Georgia’s anti-abortion law
A federal judge has permanently blocked a controversial Georgia law passed in 2019, which sought to ban abortions once there was a “detectable human heartbeat”, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
The law would have also granted personhood to a fetus, giving it the same legal rights as people after they’re born. US judge Steve Jones ruled against the state today, refusing to leave any parts of the law intact. The ruling permanently blocks the state from enforcing the law, which he had temporarily blocked in October and never went into effect.
The law had faced intense backlash from the film industry, and experts warned it would have deadly consequences for women forced underground:
The governor, Brian Kemp, a Republican and a supporter of the restrictions, has vowed to appeal the ruling, though he will face an uphill battle given that the US Supreme Court last month struck down other abortion restrictions from Louisiana. Some more background from the Associated Press:
At least eight states passed so-called heartbeat bills in 2019, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee. South Carolina is still considering one. All of the new bans joined the fate of earlier heartbeat abortion bans from Arkansas, North Dakota and Iowa in being at least temporarily blocked by judges. Louisiana’s ban wouldn’t take effect unless a court upholds Mississippi’s law.
In a separate ruling Monday, a U.S. district judge in Tennessee blocked a Tennessee law that Republican Gov. Bill had signed hours earlier banning an abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy and prohibiting abortions based on race, sex or diagnosis of Down syndrome.
Updated
at 5.33pm EDT
4.39pm EDT16:39
Hi all – Sam Levin here, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day, writing from Los Angeles, which is returning to strict closures for a number of industries, as Covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to surge here.
Business owners in LA have told me that it’s been particularly painful to restart and then shut down again, and that they have been pouring money into making their indoor operations safe, with little certainty about when they can properly reopen. Here’s more from my colleague Vivian Ho on the state of the crisis and new restrictions across California:
4.32pm EDT16:32
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Sam Levin, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
California governor Gavin Newsom issued a statewide order that many recently reopened businesses must cease indoor operations, as the state grapples with a surge in new cases of coronavirus. The order impacts restaurants, wineries, movie theaters and museums, among other venues. Bars must also close all operations, according to the order.
The justice department released the order commuting Roger Stone’s sentence. The order showed all elements of Stone’s sentences — including his prison time, his probation and his $20,000 fine — have all been voided. The department released the order hours after Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has presided over Stone’s case, requested clarification on whether the order affected Stone’s probation.
Trump falsely claimed he has receive “rave reviews” for commuting Stone’s sentence. In reality, both Democrats and Republicans criticized the commutation as a miscarriage of justice. Republican senator Mitt Romney described it as “unprecedented, historic corruption.”
California’s two largest public school districts are going entirely online when classes resume next month. The announcement makes the LA and San Diego districts the largest school districts in the country to announce they will not resume in-person instruction when the new academic year starts.
Trump retweeted a claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “lying” about coronavirus. The tweet comes as the White House seeks to raise doubts about the credibility of Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.
A US district judge set a new delay in federal executions. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s injuction came hours before the first federal execution in 17 years was set to take place at a federal prison in Indiana.
Sam will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
4.18pm EDT16:18
Joe Biden released a scathing video about Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the president downplays the country’s recent surge in new cases.
Joe Biden
(@JoeBiden)
“We’re leading the world.” pic.twitter.com/QQzaQeKAUj
July 13, 2020
The ad features some of Trump’s recent comments about the pandemic, including his claim that the US is “leading the world” in the fight against coronavirus.
As footage of Trump’s comments plays, a graphic shows the rising coronavirus death toll in the United States. More than 135,000 Americans have now died of coronavirus.
The US has confirmed 3,341,838 cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker, meaning the US accounts for about a quarter of all cases worldwide.
4.03pm EDT16:03
California shuts down indoor operations of many recently reopened businesses
The Guardian’s Vivian Ho reports from California:
California’s governor has ordered all counties across the state to shut down the indoor operations of several recently reopened sectors of the economy, including restaurants, bars, movie theaters and malls following a surge in new coronavirus cases.
The state has seen an average of 8,211 new cases over the past week, an uptick from the 7,876 average recorded the week before. The positivity rate has increased to 7.4%, up from 6.1% a few weeks prior.
Gavin Newsom
(@GavinNewsom)
NEW: #COVID19 cases continue to spread at alarming rates.CA is now closing indoor operations STATEWIDE for:-Restaurants-Wineries-Movie theaters, family entertainment-Zoos, museums-CardroomsBars must close ALL operations.
July 13, 2020
“It’s incumbent on all of us to recognize, soberly, that covid-19 is not going away anytime soon,” said Gavin Newsom, California’s governor.
The order will affect places of worship, fitness centers, zoos, museums, entertainment centers and personal care centers. It comes as the state’s monitoring list of counties experiencing surges has grown to include 30 counties.
Updated
at 4.04pm EDT
3.43pm EDT15:43
Roger Stone’s clemency order by Trump released
Joanna Walters
The attorney at the Office of the Pardon, that well known corner of the Washington labyrinth, has released the clemency order that Donald Trump signed for Roger Stone last Friday.
Stone was due to report to federal prison tomorrow. But the order voids all elements of his sentence, including the time behind bars, the $20,000 fine and the two years of probation. Earlier today, Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked for a copy of the order to clarify whether it applied to Stone’s probation.
Stone has not been pardoned, however. The president has reportedly encouraged him to appeal his conviction for lying and witness tampering in the Russia investigation. And a pardon implies that someone was guilty.
Kyle Cheney
(@kyledcheney)
JUST IN: The Office of the Pardon attorney has posted the clemency order that Trump signed for Roger STONE.It voids all elements of his sentence, including a $20,000 fine and two years of supervised release.https://t.co/Ps7OWfvJhl pic.twitter.com/lnuFN50mtv
July 13, 2020
Also, Stone released from home confinement.
Ali Dukakis
(@ajdukakis)
This also releases Stone from home confinement effective immediately, it says.
July 13, 2020
Updated
at 4.23pm EDT
3.38pm EDT15:38
Joanna Walters
Donald Trump has once again baited China over the coronavirus, which originated in the country last year.
At the press Q & A moments ago in Washington, the president said: “I think what China has done to the world with the China plague…the China virus…what they did to the world should not be forgotten.”
Early on in the pandemic, Trump came under heavy criticism for calling Covid-19 the “China virus” and then defending his choice of language, while also questioning whether the virus occurred naturally, as all his top experts believe, or was made in a lab.
After a while he was persuaded to stop using that phrase but in recent weeks he’s thrown away caution and diplomacy and begun using many derogatory and racially-biased terms for coronavirus, as well as continuing with repeated misinformation about the illness and the way the pandemic is being handled in the US.
3.11pm EDT15:11
Trump once again said schools should be reopened, in response to a question about the new announcement that LA and San Diego schools will be entirely online when classes resume next month.
“Schools should be opened,” Trump said. “You’re losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed.”
The president and some of his advisers have repeatedly argued that it is more dangerous to keep students home from school due to the possibility of neglect or abuse.
However, many school districts have expressed alarm about the possibility of coronavirus spreading in the classroom when in-person instruction resumes.
3.06pm EDT15:06
Trump falsely claims he’s getting ‘rave reviews’ for Stone commutation
Trump defended his highly controversial decision to commute the sentence of Roger Stone, the president’s former associate.
“I’m getting rave reviews for what I did for Roger Stone,” the president falsely claimed.
In reality, both Democrats and Republicans have criticized Trump’s decision to commute Stone’s sentence.
Republican senator Mitt Romney described Stone’s commutation as “unprecedented, historic corruption.”
Updated
at 3.14pm EDT
3.00pm EDT15:00
Trump: ‘I have a very good relationship with Dr Fauci’
Trump is now taking questions from reporters at his roundtable with families who have been positively impacted by police officers.
The first question was unsurprisingly about the White House’s recent criticism of Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert.
“I have a very good relationship with Dr Fauci,” Trump said, describing the senior official as a “very nice person.” But the president added, “I don’t always agree with him.”
Over the weekend, the White House ciriculated an unsigned memo casting some of Fauci’s past comments on coronavirus in a negative light, leading some of Trump’s critics to accuse the president of attacking science.
2.40pm EDT14:40
LA and San Diego schools will be entirely online when classes resume
The LA and San Diego unified school districts, the two largest public school systems in California, has announced classes will be entirely online when the new school year starts next month.
Austin Beutner
(@AustinLASchools)
Update on July 13thActualización del 13 de julio pic.twitter.com/HhbvV6zYfu
July 13, 2020
“Both districts will continue planning for a return to in-person learning during the 2020-21 academic year, as soon as public health conditions allow,” the school districts said in a joint statement.
“Our leaders owe it to all of those impacted by the Covid-19 closures to increase the pace of their work. No one should use the delay in the reopening of classrooms as a reason to relax. The coronavirus has not taken a summer vacation, as many had hoped. Indeed, the virus has accelerated its attacks on our community.
“The federal government must provide schools with the resources we need to reopen in a responsible manner.”
The announcement makes the two California school districts the largest ones in the country so far to announce they will not resume in-person instruction this fall.
The announcement comes as Trump and some of his top advisers push schools to reopen next month, even though the president’s administration has sent mixed signals about how schools can safely welcome students back.
Updated
at 2.51pm EDT
2.22pm EDT14:22
Trump holds roundtable on families positively affected by police
Trump is now holding a roundtable “with several Americans whose lives were helped, and in some cases saved, by law enforcement,” as the White House described it.
The president opened the roundtable by complaining about how police officers were being “very unfairly treated” in the wake of the polie killing of George Floyd.
The roundtable comes as the country experiences a national reckoning over racism and police brutality in response to the killing of Floyd and many other black Americans in police custody, including Breonna Taylor.
Updated
at 3.26pm EDT
2.10pm EDT14:10
Attorney general William Barr ignored a question about Roger Stone’s commutation, a week after Barr described the former Trump associate’s sentence as “fair.”
Weijia Jiang
(@weijia)
NEW—Last week Attorney General Bill Barr described Roger Stone’s sentence as “fair”. Just now he had no comment on the President’s decision to commute Stone: pic.twitter.com/YFGPaD3xKm
July 13, 2020
Senior justice department officials previously intervened in the Stone case to push for a more lenient sentence for the president’s former associate, causing some of the prosecutors involved in the case to withdraw.
Last week, the justice department declined to side with Stone after he argued the start of his prison sentence should be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence a day later.
2.01pm EDT14:01
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has just concluded her briefing at the White House, during which she was repeatedly pressed on how the administration is responding to the recent surge in new cases of coronavirus.
McEnany defended the administration’s response to the pandemic by noting that the rate of coronavirus deaths has not risen as sharply as the rate of new cases in recent weeks.
However, public health experts have warned that the death toll often lags behind new cases as an indicator for the spread of the virus.
There is also evidence that the death toll is starting to rise. The seven-day average of daily coronavirus deaths now stands at 719, up from 471 a week ago.
1.50pm EDT13:50
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was pressed on Trump’s debunked claim that expanded coronavirus testing has caused the increased number of cases in the US.
A reporter noted the positivity rate of coronavirus tests has also climbed in many parts of the country, which cannot be explained by expanded testing.
McEnany replied by saying the administration has acknowledged there would be “embers” of the crisis that states had to grapple with, but she once again emphasized that more testing reveals more positive cases.
But it is difficult to view the recent surges in new cases as “embers” considering many states are seeing record levels of new infections. Florida reported more than 15,000 new cases in one day over the weekend.
1.45pm EDT13:45
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump’s highly controversial decision to commute the sentence of his former associate, Roger Stone.
The Hill
(@thehill)
Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany: “There really are two standards of justice in this country.” pic.twitter.com/ASbT6g2NCx
July 13, 2020
McEnany described Stone’s commutation as a “very important moment for justice in this country,” criticizing the Russia investigation that led to his conviction as “completely bogus.”
The press secretary complained that there are “really two standards of justice” in the country, arguing former officials like former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe should have faced similar charges. More
Nancy Pelosi calls commutation a ‘threat to national security’
Mueller breaks silence and condemns Trump for commuting sentence
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At America’s birth, when delegates in Virginia were debating whether to ratify the constitution, a politician called George Mason had an objection. Mason, who was influential over the development of the bill of rights, wondered whether the presidential pardon power was too broad. Might not the president encourage people who worked for him to commit crimes, and then pardon them? If he could, there would be essentially no check on a president’s power to break the law. Given that sort of leeway, an unscrupulous president could “establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic”.Mason’s objection ought to concern us still today. Late on Friday, Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone, all but guaranteeing that Stone will never face justice for crimes he committed while obstructing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with WikiLeaks and the Russian intelligence agencies who attempted to tip the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Backlash to the decision has been swift, with Trump’s fellow Republican Mitt Romney condemning the president’s “unprecedented, historic corruption”.It is not quite true to say that there is no precedent for Trump’s act. As Mason foresaw, executive clemency has been misused by presidents throughout American history. George HW Bush pardoned six officials who had been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal – an act which may have been intended to cover up his own wrongdoing. George W Bush commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who obstructed a federal investigation into the illegal outing of a CIA operative who was critical of the Bush administration.This history doesn’t make Trump’s actions any less troubling. In fact, by revealing how little restraint there is on the use of executive clemency, it ought to make us worry how much further the president – whose disregard for political and constitutional norms truly is without precedent – might go in the future.Most presidents issue their most controversial pardons furtively, at the end of their terms in office. But Trump has reveled in his ability to toss aside the principle of the rule of law when it comes to his own allies. In 2017 he pardoned the former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had violated the constitutional rights of countless Arizonans. During the Mueller investigation – which exposed evidence that Trump himself may have committed obstruction of justice, a crime for which he could still be charged after leaving office – the president issued a full pardon to Libby, seemingly with the sole purpose of sending the message that he would forgive those – like Stone – who committed obstruction to protect himself.A president who is willing to use executive clemency to forgive violations of constitutional rights and protect himself from the rule of law could become, as Mason foresaw, a monarch. At the Virginia ratifying convention, James Madison replied to Mason that such a president would surely face impeachment. But today’s Republican party has made it clear that it will protect Trump from impeachment even in the face of overwhelming evidence of his abuses of power. Instead, by refusing to convict, they licensed Trump to double down.As America moves towards an election which Trump looks on course to lose, he is likely to become even less inhibited. The issuing of pardons and commutations for crimes already committed might pale in comparison with crimes yet to come. Trump could seek, once again, to sway the outcome of the election, promising pardons to his co-conspirators. He could order, as he did outside the White House, security forces to be used to disperse protesters who came into the streets in response, then issue pardons for any crimes tried by court martial or in Washington DC’s highest court.The fact that Trump has rarely shown the focus, intelligence or competence necessary to pull off such a conspiracy is little comfort. What he lacks in these qualities he makes up for in brazenness, in loyal subordinates equally willing to subvert the rule of law, and in the possession of a compliant conservative politico-media apparatus that will rationalize any action he takes. He could do incalculable damage to confidence in American democracy and the rule of law before he is finally wrested from the White House.In this sense, Roger Stone is the canary in the coal mine. Trump’s ability and willingness to commute his sentence is a reminder that for all its genius, the American founding left behind a structure which can be exploited and abused by an unscrupulous president. As we live through what are hopefully the dying days of the presidency of the most unscrupulous of them all, we have to remain on our guard. Partly because of his fears over the pardon power, George Mason ultimately became one of only three of the framers of the constitution to refuse to sign the final document, believing it created a blueprint for tyranny. Proving him wrong requires constant vigilance, now and in the future. More
