Robert Mueller Speaks Out on Roger Stone Case: ‘He Remains a Convicted Felon, and Rightly So’

Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, on Saturday broke his silence about attacks on the legitimacy of his work by President Trump and completely different main Republicans. He also spoke back to Trump’s decision gradual Friday to shuttle the penal complex sentence of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was as soon as due to birth up serving his three Twelve months, four-month sentence on July 14.

“I in fact feel compelled to respond each and each to astronomical claims that our investigation was as soon as illegitimate and our motives were contaminated, and to particular claims that Roger Stone was as soon as a sufferer of our office,” Mueller wrote in a Washington Put up op-ed published Saturday. “The Russia investigation was as soon as of paramount significance. Stone was as soon as prosecuted and convicted because he dedicated federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”

Mueller defended the work of his two-Twelve months investigation, which he neatly-known resulted in concrete action: “Per our work, eight people pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two dozen Russian people and entities, alongside side senior Russian intelligence officers, were charged with federal crimes,” he stated.

Moreover Read: Trump Commutes Roger Stone’s Reformatory Sentence

One in all the people was as soon as Stone, who worked on the Trump campaign in 2015 and in an informal potential in 2016. Based entirely totally on Mueller, “He communicated in 2016 with people acknowledged to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed reach data of WikiLeaks’ birth of emails stolen by these Russian intelligence officers.”

However Stone ran afoul of the law when he lied all over again and all over again to Congress about his activities with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. “The jury now not without lengthen convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, 5 counts of establishing unfounded statements to Congress and tampering with a gaze,” Mueller stated. “Because his sentence has been commuted, he’ll no longer scoot to penal complex. However his conviction stands.”

Mueller concluded by defending the work of the Justice Division and the investigators on the case. “We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our instances, essentially essentially based entirely fully on the facts and the law and in response to the rule of law,” he stated. “The ladies and males who performed these investigations and prosecutions acted with the absolute best integrity. Claims quite the opposite are unfounded.”