Trump commutes supporter’s sentence

Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, will not have to serve 40 months in prison for lying to Congress. A jury convicted him of trying to discover WikiLeaks’ plans to release stolen emails damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign and then attempting to cover it up. He was due to report to prison by Tuesday. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Stone was a “victim of the Russia hoax.”

What will Stone do now? He told The Associated Press the president called him earlier on Friday to inform him of the commutation, which will keep him out of prison but does not erase his conviction as a pardon would. “I am going to work as hard as I can to make sure that Mike Flynn gets final justice,” Stone said, referring to Trump’s former national security adviser who was charged with lying to federal agents.

Dig deeper: Read reporting by Harvest Prude about developments in Stone’s and Flynn’s cases.