US President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the prison sentence of his former political advisor Roger Stone, White House said.
Stone was found guilty of 7 charges last year, including witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstructing a US House investigation.
"Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Grant of Clemency commuting the unjust sentence of Roger Stone, Jr," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.
"Roger Stone is a 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," the statement read.
The statement claimed that such collusion was never "anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election".
"The collusion delusion spawned endless and farcical investigations, conducted at great taxpayer expense, looking for evidence that did not exist. As it became clear that these witch hunts would never bear fruit, the Special Counsel's Office resorted to process-based charges leveled at high-profile people in an attempt to manufacture the false impression of criminality lurking below the surface. These charges were the product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice," White House said.
The statement claimed that this is why the "out-of-control Mueller prosecutors, desperate for splashy headlines to compensate for a failed investigation, set their sights" on Stone.
"Not only was Stone charged by overzealous prosecutors pursing a case that never should have existed, and arrested in an operation that never should have been approved, but there were also serious questions about the jury in the case. The forewoman of his jury, for example, concealed the fact that she is a member of the so-called liberal "resistance" to the Trump Presidency. In now-deleted tweets, this activist-juror vividly and openly attacked President Trump and his supporters," the White House said.
"Stone, like every American, deserves a fair trial and every opportunity to vindicate himself before the courts. The President does not wish to interfere with his efforts to do so. At this time, however, and particularly in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial, the President has determined to commute his sentence. Roger Stone has already suffered greatly. He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!" the statement added.
According to a Sputnik report, Stone is one of six Trump associates who were convicted following Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. He was sentenced to 40 months in jail for obstructing the probe and was supposed to report to jail by July 14.
Earlier this year in February, four federal prosecutors withdrew from Roger Stone's case after the top Justice Department officials "disavowed and undercut" them by reducing the government's sentence against long time associate of President Donald Trump.
( With inputs from ANI )