Mueller defends Stone prosecution and says 'his conviction stands' in Washington Post op-ed

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/11/politics/robert-mueller-defends-roger-stone-prosecution/index.html

 Former special counsel Robert Mueller, in a very rare move, has written an op-ed for The Washington Post defending his office's prosecution of Roger Stone and saying he is still a convicted felon and "rightly so" in light of President Donald Trump's commutation of Stone.

"Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks' releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress," Mueller wrote in the op-ed posted Saturday evening.

Trump Commutes Roger Stone’s Prison Sentence: What You Need To Know

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Tucker Carlson's top writer resigns after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks in online forum

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media/tucker-carlson-writer-blake-neff/index.html

Neff worked at Fox News for nearly four years and was Carlson's top writer. Previously, he was a reporter at The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet that Carlson co-founded. In a recent article in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Neff said, "Anything [Carlson is] reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me." He also acknowledged the show's influence, telling the magazine, "We're very aware that we do have that power to sway the conversation, so we try to use it responsibly."

During the years that Neff wrote for him at Fox, Carlson has hosted one of the most influential shows on cable news. In the last quarter, Carlson had not only the highest-rated program in cable news, but the highest-rated show in the history of cable news. Carlson also counts President Trump among his most loyal viewers. On multiple occasions, the President has tweeted out videos of Carlson's program. Which is to say, the scripts that Neff likely helped write and shape were being shared by the President of the United States.

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Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence. Here's why he did it

House Democrats promise investigations, legislation after Trump commutes Roger Stone

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-democrats-investigations-legislation-trump-commutes-stone

House Democrats reacted furiously to President Trump’s Friday move to commute the prison sentence of political operative Roger Stone -- demanding an investigation and even legislation to stop similar commutations happening again.

“President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of top campaign advisor Roger Stone, who could directly implicate him in criminal misconduct, is an act of staggering corruption,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement on Saturday.

 

The White House announced Friday that Trump has signed an Executive Grant of Clemency for the colorful political operative, who was sentenced to more than three years in prison after he was convicted last year on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress in relation to FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

 

“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Friday night. “There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia.  Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.”

Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/10/politics/trump-stone-prison-clemency/index.html

 President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

Trump's decision to commute the sentence of his friend and political adviser is the crescendo of a months-long effort to rewrite the history of the Mueller investigation. This has included selective declassification of intelligence materials, a ramped-up counter-investigation into the origins of the Russia probe and attempts to drop the case against Michael Flynn. The President has broad constitutional power to pardon or commute sentences. But Trump is unlike almost any other president in how he's used the power proactively to save political allies.

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Pentagon opens investigation into media leaks amid Russian bounty reports

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/09/pentagon-investigation-media-leaks-russia-bounty-355360

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told lawmakers on Thursday he has launched an investigation into leaks across the Pentagon, in response to a series of "bad" disclosures of sensitive information to the news media over the past year and amid reports that Russians paid militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops.

"We are aggressively pursuing leaks within the Defense Department," Esper told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing about the military's role in civil law enforcement, adding that leaks are a problem across the U.S. government. "It's bad and it's unlawful and it needs to stop."

 In response to additional questioning later, Esper acknowledged that he was in fact briefed on intelligence reports that Russia made "payments" to militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

Esper added that the intelligence reports on the bounty program was not produced by the Defense Department, and defense intelligence agencies have been unable to corroborate them.