Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence is in trouble already

Can the President of the United States pardon, or commute the sentence of, his own criminal co-conspirator? That’s a question we don’t have a constitutional answer to, because no President has ever tried it – until now. Palmer Report predicted that there would be court challenges to Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence. It turns out we were right.

Two legal experts are already asking Judge Amy Berman Jackson to consider the constitutionality of the Roger Stone commutation:

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Jill Wine-Banks, from the original prosecution team against Richard Nixon, tweeted that she found the above legal filing to be “interesting.” We have no idea if Judge Jackson will take them up on it. But even if she doesn’t, this commutation can be legally challenged in various other ways, and it appears this is all just getting started.

Throw in Roger Stone’s public hint that he would turn over criminal dirt on Trump unless his sentence was commuted – felony blackmail on Stone’s part – and Trump’s swift commutation thereafter, which constituted bribery, and the legal argument against the commutation gets stronger. Trump may have succeeded in keeping Stone out of prison for now, but it won’t necessarily work forever.