Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Roger Stone to 40 months in prison Thursday after the Justice Department recommended a nearly decadelong sentence last week before Attorney General William Barr controversially intervened and walked it back.
“He was not prosecuted, as some complained, for standing up for the president,” Jackson said. “He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
Stone, a self-described “dirty trickster” and longtime confidant to President Trump, was swept up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and arrested last January. He was found guilty in November on five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference about his alleged outreach to WikiLeaks, in addition to one count that he “corruptly influenced, obstructed, and impeded” the congressional investigation and another for attempting to “corruptly persuade” the congressional testimony of radio show host Randy Credico.
Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months for obstruction of justice and 12 months for the other five counts to be served concurrently. Stone also received a $20,000 fine and 24 months of supervised release when he gets out.
Jackson said that “the government’s original memorandum was thorough,” and “any suggestion that the prosecutors in this case did anything untoward or unethical is false.” But she admitted that seven to nine years in prison “would be unnecessary.” The judge said, “I sincerely doubt,” she would have sentenced him to that many years behind bars, even if there hadn’t been a firestorm surrounding the case.
Jackson said Stone was asked to provide answers to “not some secret anti-Trump cabal, but to who? The Congress.” She pointed out that “at the time, both the House and the Senate were controlled by the Republican Party.”
“I am not passing judgment on Roger Stone as a man — that falls to a higher authority,” Jackson said. “It falls to me to sentence him just for the conduct he was found guilty of by a jury.”
And Jackson pushed back against criticism of the case by Trump and others.
“The defendant lied about a matter of great national and international importance … and he lied to Congress, the judge said. “There was nothing unfair, phony, or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.”
“The court cannot be influenced by those comments. They were entirely inappropriate. But I will not hold them against the defendant,” Jackson said. “But it would not be proper for me to be buffeted by the winds from the Left, either.”
The DOJ’s D.C. office told the court last Monday it recommended Stone receive up to nine years behind bars, but Trump tweeted late that night that he “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” The DOJ reversed itself Tuesday, and the four line prosecutors on the case withdrew. The DOJ said its decision was made before Barr was aware of Trump’s position, and Trump denied placing pressure on the agency. The department walked back the “unduly high” sentence recommendation, suggesting three to four years instead but leaving it up to the judge.
In response, more than a thousand ex-DOJ prosecutors signed a petition calling on Barr to resign because of the “damage” he’d done to the DOJ’s reputation.
The DOJ seemed to reverse itself again in court, however, standing by the applicability of the guidelines and the accuracy of the original sentencing memo, but deferring to the judge to hand down the sentence.
“The original sentencing memorandum from the original trial team was done in good faith,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb told the judge, adding, “The prosecution was, and is, righteous … The court should impose a substantial period of incarceration.”
“We defer to the court, and we have confidence that the court will impose a just and fair sentence in this matter,” Crabb told Jackson.
Jackson pointed to Stone’s intimidation of Credico, his deception of Congress, and his repeated violation of court gag orders when making her ruling.
Stone called Credico a “rat” and a “stoolie” and told him, “I’m going to take that dog away from you — nothing you can do about it” and “prepare to die, cocksucker.”
But Stone’s attorneys referenced Credico’s post-sentencing letter to the court, which read in part, “I never in any way felt that Stone himself posed a direct physical threat to me or to my dog. I chalked up his bellicose tirades to ‘Stone being Stone.’ All bark and no bite!”
“The defendant’s memorandum refers to this as banter, which it hardly is,” Jackson said.
Seth Ginsberg, a mob lawyer who only joined Stone’s legal team last week, said that “given Mr. Stone’s larger-than-life persona, it’s important to remind the court that he’s not just that persona, but a real person” with a wife, children, and grandchildren.
“They’ve already suffered quite a bit, including the horrific circumstances under which he was arrested,” Ginsberg said, adding, “The process to some extent has already been the punishment.”
“Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” Trump tweeted about Stone last week.
The message prompted Barr to push back against Trump publicly last Thursday.
“I have a problem with some of, some of the tweets,” he said, adding that Trump’s public commentary about the DOJ’s cases “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
“The Stone case was prosecuted while I was attorney general — and I supported it,” Barr added. “I thought that was a righteous prosecution. And I was happy that he was convicted.”
Two big questions remained unresolved: the Republican operative’s pending request for a retrial as well as speculation about a pardon from Trump, who tweeted a segment from Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News calling for a Stone pardon early Thursday morning.
Stone’s lawyers filed a motion for a retrial last week following revelations that the jury forewoman during his trial had a social media history of anti-Trump posts, and the judge hasn’t ruled on that yet. If Stone’s long-shot challenge is successful, his sentence would be tossed, and the DOJ would have to try him again. The judge shot down a similar previous request.
The controversy surrounding Stone juror Tomeka Hart, a former Democratic congressional candidate, kicked into high gear when it was revealed she shared anti-Trump posts on social media, and Stone’s lawyers filed a motion for a retrial last week.
Hart tweeted about Trump dozens of times and was critical of the president and his supporters, with some comments regarding the targets of Mueller’s investigation. Hart’s tweets include a few about Russian interference and allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.
“Ignoring the numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of people in 45’s inner-circle, some Republicans are asserting that the Mueller investigation was a waste of time because he hasn’t found evidence of…” Hart wrote in a March 2019 tweet.
A transcript of the under-oath examination of the jury pool in November shows Hart promised to make her judgment based on the facts. Stone’s lawyers did not move to strike Hart from the pool at the time.
Jackson said she’d rule on the retrial motion after sentencing. She previously presided over a number of other spinoff cases from Mueller’s two-year investigation, including against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign deputy turned government witness Rick Gates, and former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig.
