Hillary Clinton accused Roger Stone of threatening to speak out against President Trump if he ended up having to serve his prison sentence.
During a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee theorized about the reason behind Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence.
“Well, I think it’s pretty clear that Stone threatened him,” Clinton said. “He probably threatened him privately, but he also threatened him publicly about what he would say if he had to go to prison, and this is a continuation of the cover-up.”
While it was not immediately clear what public statements from Stone that Clinton was referencing, the self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” repeatedly touted the fact that he remained silent and said he would not testify against Trump, his “friend of 40 years.” Stone has, however, denied that he “traded his silence for a commutation.”
Stone was arrested in connection with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and lying to Congress in November and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison before the president commuted his sentence.
“So, what [the president] did was to use the awesome power of commutation, as part of the pardon power of the president, to basically shut up Roger Stone so that Roger Stone would not spill any more beans about what actually happened and how much Donald Trump actually knew,” Clinton concluded.
Midway through that comment, host Joy Reid expressed her agreement with the sentiment by replying, “Yeah.”
