Trump commutes longtime friend Roger Stone's prison sentence

President Donald Trump commuted Roger Stone's sentence on Friday, just days before his longtime friend and adviser was due to report to prison, the White House announced.

"Roger Stone has already suffered greatly," the White House said in a statement. "He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!"

Mr Stone, 67, was scheduled to report by Tuesday to a federal prison in Jesup, Georgia, to begin serving a sentence of three years and four months for lying under oath to US lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The veteran Republican political operative's friendship with Mr Trump dates back decades.

In announcing its clemency decision for Mr Stone, the White House took aim at former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and the prosecutors who brought the case against Mr Stone.

The White House said Mr Stone "is victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency."

"There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election," the White House said.

Asked by reporters earlier on Friday about reports he planned to pardon Mr Stone, Mr Trump said, "I'll be looking at it. I think Roger Stone was very unfairly treated, as were many people."

A commutation does not erase a criminal conviction as a pardon does.

Late on Friday, the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia denied Mr Stone's request for a delay in reporting to prison.

Mr Trump's decision to commute Mr Stone's sentence marks his most assertive intervention to protect an associate in a criminal case and the latest use of executive clemency to benefit an ally.

Congressional Democrats and other critics have accused Mr Trump of undermining the rule of law by publicly complaining about criminal cases against associates including Mr Stone, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

A Washington jury in November 2019 convicted Mr Stone on all seven criminal counts of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness.

Mr Stone was convicted for lying to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks, the website that released damaging emails about Mr Trump's 2016 Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton that US intelligence officials have concluded were stolen by Russian hackers.