#White House fires back after Mueller rips Roger Stone in op-ed

The White House is denouncing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s newly-published op-ed defending the prosecution and conviction of Roger Stone.

In a statement released one day after Mueller’s op-ed, Deputy White House Press Secretary Judd Deere slammed the former special counsel and his probe.

“Robert Mueller and his corrupt investigation failed to hold anyone in the Obama-Biden Administration accountable for their negligence toward Russian interference or for spying on the Trump Campaign based on a Democrat-funded dossier full of lies, and instead wasted taxpayer dollars trying to undo an election,” Deere’s statement on Sunday read.

“Mr. Mueller should keep his promise to the American people and let the report, which fully exonerated the President, stand instead of pontificating in the editorial pages with more spin.”

On Saturday, Mueller defended his investigation in a Washington Post op-ed, specifically with regard to his office’s handling of Roger Stone’s actions.

“I feel 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. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so,” the former special counsel wrote.

Mueller’s two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election found no collusion by the Trump campaign, something the former FBI director noted in the piece.

“We now have a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate. We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them.

“We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, 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,” he continued.

Mueller wrote the op-ed in response to President Trump’s decision to commute his longtime aide’s prison sentence, which the commander-in-chief announced on Friday.

Trump at the time called Stone a victim of a “Russian hoax” and saying he would have been put at serious medical risk if placed behind bars.

Trump on Friday signed an executive grant of clemency just days before Stone was due to report to prison Tuesday to serve a 40-month sentence after he was found guilty on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress.

Stone had appealed the ruling and long maintained his innocence.

Attorney General Barr has slammed the “Russian collusion” investigation as “without any basis.”

“I think the president has every right to be frustrated because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history,” Barr said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham in April.

“Even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president,” Barr said. “To sabotage the presidency, and I think that — or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

The Inspector General’s report on the Russia probe detailed 17 errors and omissions in FISA applications throughout the FBI’s investigation, including failing to tell the court when questions were raised about the reliability of some of the information it had presented to receive the warrants.

Barr said at the time that he believed they were more than just mistakes.

“My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness,” he said. “There is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.