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Trump says he’s still considering pardoning Roger Stone

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that he continues to consider pardoning political consultant Roger Stone, who was sentenced earlier this year to serve 40 months in prison for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction.

"I'll be looking at it," Trump told reporters Friday ahead of a trip to Florida. "I think Roger Stone was very unfairly treated."

Stone had been scheduled to begin his sentence late last month, but a judge pushed back that date due to the coronavirus pandemic. Stone is expected to report Tuesday to begin his prison sentence.

Rumors have swirled since his conviction that Trump might issue a pardon for him, though he said in December that he hadn’t considered it, USA Today reported.

Trump has repeatedly voiced public support for Stone, a longtime confidant of his. The president told a crowd gathered in Las Vegas shortly after Stone's sentencing in February that he thought Stone had "a very good chance of exoneration" though he added that he wanted "the process to play out."

In November, a jury convicted Stone of several charges connected to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors said he lied to protect the Trump campaign from embarrassment and scrutiny in its quest for emails hacked by Russian officials and disseminated during the election by WikiLeaks.

Stone was a prominent figure in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He and Trump have been friends since the 1980s, according to The Washington Post.