to Congress and witness tampering as a result of the investigation. Trump retweeted a clip of Carlson's segment. Carlson also met with Jared Kushner at the White House and demanded clemency for Stone. Trump commuted Stone's sentence on July 10, 2020. Carlson asserted in December 2019 that "Putin, for all his faults, does not hate America as much as many of these people do", referring to liberals. "They really dislike our country. And they call other people traitors because they're mouthing the talking points of Putin." He was criticized by Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador during the Obama administration, who said, "You are wrong Mr. Carlson. Putin does hate America", urging him to "stop attacking Americans & defending Putin". As Russia threatened a military incursion into Ukraine in December 2021, Russian state television broadcast remarks Carlson had made on his program in which he asserted "NATO exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin", that the United States fomented the 2014 overthrow of the pro-Russia Ukrainian government and that President Joe Biden sought "a hot war with Russia". In January 2022, Carlson stated in an interview for Axios that he "could care less [sic] if they call me a pawn of Putin", and also stated that he hoped Republican primary voters in the 2022 United States elections would vote out candidates that "believes Ukraine's borders are more important than our borders". In late February 2022, on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Carlson described the preceding crisis as a "border dispute" and said it was "not treason, it is not un-American" to support Putin, "it's the whole point of America." He also said his viewers should ask themselves, "Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?" Carlson changed his tone after the invasion, telling his viewers on February 24, 2022, that "what Russia has done is awful" and that Putin "clearly does deserve to be punished" for invading Ukraine, while warning that the conflict could turn into a world war. However, in March 2022, Carlson started to amplify baseless Russian state propaganda that the U.S. and Ukraine were purportedly developing biological weapons in Ukraine. That month, as reported by Mother Jones, the Kremlin sent a memo to state-friendly media outlets saying it was "essential" to use video clips of Carlson "as much as possible".