Robert Mueller Breaks Silence to Fire Back at Critics in Rare Op-Ed: Roger Stone ‘Remains a Convicted Felon, and Rightly So’
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Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller has made few public statements regarding his investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, submitting his report and then testifying before Congress just about one year ago, but President Donald Trump‘s decision to commute the prison sentence of Roger Stone — and the White House’s comments about Stone’s case — have driven Mueller to break his silence, with an op-ed published Saturday afternoon in the Washington Post.
Mueller began the op-ed by stating that the work of the special counsel’s office “should speak for itself,” but he felt “compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office.”
Calling the Russia investigation of “paramount importance,” Mueller cut to the core of the issue: “Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”
Mueller reviews the scope of the orders appointing him as special counsel and setting the parameters of the investigation. Stone was a “central figure” in the investigation, explained Mueller, for two reasons: “He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of emails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers.”
Noting the limitations of the investigatory findings that he published in his report, Mueller admitted that they “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities.”
“The investigation did, however,” he continued, “establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
Mueller includes a list of Stone’s lies to Congress, noting that a jury convicted him of multiple counts of obstructing a Congressional investigation, making false statements to Congress, and witness tampering.
“When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those efforts.”
“Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison,” Mueller wrote. “But his conviction stands.”
Mueller concludes with a defense of the work conducted by his team as “based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law. ”
“The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.”
