Trump’s Clemency Came After Displays of Loyalty by Stone

Months before F.B.I. agents arrived in darkness at his Florida home to take him into custody, Roger J. Stone Jr. promised that he would remain loyal to his longtime friend. “I will never roll on Donald Trump,” he said.

He did not, and Mr. Stone is now a free man.

The president’s decision on Friday to commute Mr. Stone’s prison sentence for impeding a congressional inquiry and other crimes was extraordinary because federal prosecutors had suspected that Mr. Stone could shed light on whether Mr. Trump had lied to them under oath or illegally obstructed justice. Even Mr. Stone suggested a possible quid pro quo, telling a journalist hours before the announcement that he hoped for clemency because Mr. Trump knew he had resisted intense pressure from prosecutors to cooperate.

It was the latest example of how Mr. Trump has managed to bend America’s legal machinery to his advantage and undermine a criminal investigation that has dominated so much of his presidency. Mr. Trump’s move was so stunning that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russia’s election interference and has insistently refused to go beyond what was in his report, responded with an op-ed published late Saturday in The Washington Post.

“When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable,” Mr. Mueller wrote. “Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.”