WASHINGTON — Roger Stone has dropped the appeal of his seven felony convictions.

What You Need To Know

  • Stone was convicted on seven counts stemming from the Trump-Russia investigation

  • The president commuted his 40-month prison sentence last month

  • Stone says he's convinced he would not have received a fair appeal

In a five-page court filing late Monday night, lawyers for the longtime confidant of President Donald Trump asked to withdraw Stone’s appeal.

Stone, 67, was convicted in November on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstructing justice and tampering with a witness as he attempted to thwart a House investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison and fined $20,000, but Trump, who claimed his friend was treated “unfairly” in the courts, commuted the sentence last month.

Stone’s conviction still stood, however, unless he won his appeal. 

While his lawyers did not provide a reason for their decision to drop his appeal, Stone wrote on his website, StoneColdTruth.com, that his attorneys “convinced me that the odds of victory were slim.”

“On the strong advice of my attorneys and after giving the decision considerable thought, I have reluctantly decided to dismiss the appeal of what I believe to be a wrongful conviction in a trial  tainted by judicial bias, egregious and blatant juror bias and misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct,” Stone wrote. 

Stone added that he believes it would have been “impossible for me to ever get a fair hearing from this appellate court for the vitally important, fundamental constitutional issues my case raises.”

“It is time for me to move on with my life with my family, friends, and supporters,” he wrote. “I regret not going forward with the appeal to fully expose all that happened, with the hope that by doing so, I could help prevent it from happening to anyone else ever again; but I had to decide based on what is best for me and my family.”

While Stone maintains he’s innocent, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller responded last month to attacks that his team’s investigation into Stone were illegitimate by writing an op-ed in The Washington Post.

“Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes,” Mueller wrote. “He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”

There is still the possibility that Trump could pardon Stone, erasing the conviction. However, David Schoen, a lawyer for Stone, told Politico that the decision to drop the appeal was not coordinated with the White House.