A petition calling on President Donald Trump to pardon Roger Stone, his long time confidante and advisor for his 2016 election campaign, has surpassed 20,000 in the days following Stone’s guilty verdict.
The Change.org petition has over 20,000 signatures calling for the president to pardon Stone, suggesting it is on track to reach the 100,000 required to receive an official response from the White House.
The petition simply reads, “We, the undersigned, respectfully request that the President of the United States grant a full and unconditional pardon to Roger Jason Stone Jr.”
Stone was convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress, with the prosecution claiming Stone lied about his tenuous connections to Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
Prior to the trial, the judge issued a gag order against Stone, making it impossible for him to effectively comment on his case, appear on television or radio interviews, or receive paid speaking engagements. He remains under this gag order after his conviction and leading up to sentencing.
The long time advisor to President Trump was arrested over a year ago in a 5 a.m. raid on his home that many commentators have noted employed more individuals than were necessary to kill terrorist leader Osama bin-Laden.
Adding to the controversy was CNN’s presence at the raid, leading many to wonder if CNN had prior knowledge of Stone’s arrest.
As the trial continued, a former NSA official came forward to say “there was no hack” of the DNC servers, suggesting the prosecution’s case against Stone was flawed from the start.
“I heard that in the case against Roger Stone the prosecution is still advocating that there was an illegal hack and I have proved there could not possibly have been a foreign hack. I proved in affidavits that I wrote for Roger already, based on all my experience and even experiments with download times, that there could not have been a foreign hack.” Binney said.
Binney and the other former officials argue that the DNC data was leaked not hacked by a person with physical access to the DNC’s computer system.
“Forensic times prove that the data was downloaded onto storage devices. I can easily prove it. Even when Gruccifer 2.0 said that he had hacked from a foreign country, I can prove that is not true. The download speed was too fast for it to be foreign, I proved that with extensive experiments. I had hackers all over Europe download data and compared that information to prove what I already know. The court has that information,” Binney said.
Legal analysts say Stone faces anywhere from 20 to 50 years, though some note he may receive a shorter sentence due to his lack of criminal history.
