Right-wing activist, pundit, and unsuccessful political candidate Ed Martin said on his radio show Monday evening that Roger Stone’s recent seven-count conviction was “so wrong,” and he called on President Donald Trump to pardon Stone and award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the same day. In a Tuesday morning email promoting the segment, Martin included a link to Stone’s legal defense fund.
Stone, a notorious right-wing political operative, was convicted in federal court on Friday “of seven felonies for obstructing the congressional inquiry, lying to investigators under oath and trying to block the testimony of a witness whose account would have exposed his lies,” the New York Times reported.
Martin acknowledged that Stone “wasn’t forthcoming with some of these investigators and Congress and others,” but he said Stone was trying to “stop a coup by the deep state against the duly elected president.” In Stone’s dealings with Congress, Martin said, “he was literally fighting the deep state coup–literally.”
“Roger Stone deserves a medal more than he deserves jail time,” said Martin. “President Trump should pardon Roger Stone and give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the same time.”
Martin condemned the Justice Department for going after Stone, saying his prosecution and conviction were “a betrayal of we, the people, by the court system, by the justice system.” He compared Stone to Michael Flynn—who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador—and said they are examples of “the deep state taking out people who are successful at either defending the president or being directionally in the way the president wants to go.”
Martin is not the first to propose a pardon for Stone. While the jury was deliberating Stone’s fate, Infowars’ Alex Jones read what he claimed was a message from Stone himself appealing to Trump for a pardon.
In addition to his “What You Need to Know” radio show, Martin runs Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, one of the groups that emerged from a contentious splintering of the late activist’s political legacy. Martin ran for a seat on the Fairfax County board of supervisors in Virginia’s elections this year, losing by about 30 percentage points.
