Today — a day that Trump & Co. were clearly hoping (without reason) that it would be a slow news day, Donald Trump commuted the sentence of longtime ally Roger Stone, a political trickster and longtime Trump confidant who had been convicted in federal court in our future 51st State of crimes far more serious than any crimes ever committed at the behest of Tricky Dick Nixon (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/10/trump-commutes-sentence-roger-stone-356760).
Stone, 67 and seven years younger than Trump (who, by the way, raised a — to him — paltry ten million dollars in the COVID-19 hot spot of the Sunshine State today), had been ordered by Judge Amy Berman Jackson to report on July 14 (Bastille Day in France) to a federal prison in Jesup, Georgia.
Stone, the picture of health, claimed he suffered from health conditions that put him at serious risk of dying if he went to that prison, which is experiencing a coronavirus attack.
In 1980, having worked on Tricky Dick’s campaigns, Stone founded a lobbying firm with Paul Manafort.
Remember him? He was convicted in two federal courts, one in the District of Columbia, the other in the Eastern District of Virginia, and sentenced to a long time in prison. Those prosecutions were led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III, a Republican.
Where is Manafort now?
On May 13 of this COVID-19 year, he was released to home confinement because of the threat of the coronavirus.
Newly minted associate solitary reporter Keith Blair, who has covered Minnesota politics for many years, was with Minnesota’s native son, Bob Dylan, as Dylan greeted Stone outside his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joining Dylan in Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, the Blair-Dylan duo sang
“Roger, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone you just like they said they would
They’ll stone you when you should be in a cell
And they’ll stone you whatever you do — 'well'
But you should not feel so all alone
Everybody deserves the break you just got.”
Thanking Blair and Dylan, Stone, wearing his trademark sunglasses, flashed his usual victory sign, just as Tricky Dick did when he boarded a U S military helicopter that took him from the White House to San Clemente on August 10, 1974.