Trump’s ally, Roger Stone, was convicted of lying to Congress about efforts to get information from WikiLeaks about emails stolen by Russian agents from the head of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Faced with an order to report to prison next week, longtime Republican operative Roger Stone on Tuesday begged President Donald Trump for either a pardon or a commutation of his 40-month criminal sentence.
“I want the president to know that I have exhausted all my legal remedies and that only an act of clemency will provide justice in my case and save my life!” Stone said in a text message to Bloomberg reporters, according to a news story by the outlet.
That message came a day after The New York Times reported that Trump is likely to pardon Stone, or otherwise prevent his friend and political ally from having to go to prison by commuting his sentence.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
After this article was published, Stone, in a scathing Instagram post, disputed the idea that he “begged” Trump for clemency, and used an expletive to refer to one of the article’s reporters.
“Anyone who reads my statement can clearly see I have not ‘begged’ the president for anything,” Stone wrote. “I was so completely railroaded by brain-dead Robert Mueller’s dirty cops that I have openly said that I am praying for clemency from the president.
