Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for obstruction, false statements, and witness tampering
- Republican political operative and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone was sentenced by a federal judge on Thursday to serve 40 months, or a little over three years, in prison.
- In November, Stone was convicted by a jury on one count of obstruction of justice, five counts of making false statements to the FBI and congressional investigators, and one count of witness tampering.
- Initially, federal prosecutors recommended a seven to nine-year sentence for Stone but were overruled by DOJ leadership after Trump publicly complained about the length of the sentence.
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Roger Stone, a former Republican political strategist and informal adviser to President Donald Trump, was sentenced by a federal judge on Thursday to serve 40 months in prison on convictions of witness tampering, making false statements, and obstruction.
The special counsel Robert Mueller's office indicted Stone in January 2019 on seven charges - one count of obstruction of justice, five counts of making false statements to the FBI and congressional investigators, and one count of witness tampering - in connection with his contacts with people linked to the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks.
After Mueller formally wrapped up his Russia investigation in March, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia took over and continued to prosecute Stone's case. Stone was convicted by a jury on all seven counts against him in November 2019.
"The defendant lied about a matter of great national and international significance. This is not campaign hijinks. This is not just Roger being Roger," US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in sentencing Stone. She also refuted Trump's attacks on federal prosecutors for bringing the case against him, saying, "there was nothing unfair, phony, or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution."
Initially, the federal prosecutors who argued Stone's case recommended a seven to nine-year sentence for Stone pursuant to federal guidelines, which Trump immediately criticized on Twitter as "a horrible and very unfair situation" and "a miscarriage of a justice," suggesting that his Democratic foes should be prosecuted instead.
Hours later, the Department of Justice leadership overruled their prosecutors' sentencing recommendation, with higher-level officials releasing a separate memo saying the seven to nine-year recommendation "could be considered excessive and unwarranted" and that the DOJ will "[defer] to the Court" about how long Stone should be sentenced.
The sudden reversal of the DOJ's recommendation shocked veteran prosecutors and led to all four Assistant US Attorneys assigned to the prosecution withdrawing from the case en masse, casting serious doubt over the DOJ's independence from Trump's influence.
In an interview with ABC News, Attorney General William Barr - who has long been criticized for comprising the DOJ's integrity with his fealty to Trump's demands - said that while Trump has never asked him to intervene in a criminal proceeding, the president's tweets make his job more difficult.
Despite Barr's attempts at damage control, the entire episode has shaken faith in his leadership of the DOJ. The events surrounding Stone's sentencing led to over 2,500 former federal prosecutors calling on Barr to resign from his position an in open letter.
"Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department's top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President," the letter said.
In another unprecedented move, Trump has attacked Jackson, the federal judge who presided over both Stone's case and the DC-based criminal case against Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is currently serving time in federal prison on convictions stemming from the Russia probe.
At Stone's sentencing hearing, Judge Jackon addressed the criticisms over the federal sentencing guidelines in Stone's case, saying: "For those of you new to this and [woke] up last week to the fact that the [sentencing] guidelines are harsh...I can assure you that defense attorneys and many judges have been making that point for a long time but we don't usually succeed in getting the government to agree."
In sentencing Stone, Jackson defended the initial sentencing memo from federal prosecutors as "thorough, well-researched and supported," but said she believed their recommendation of seven to nine years "would be greater than necessary."
Jackson also denounced Trump's tweets calling for a lighter sentence for Stone as "entirely inappropriate," but said they did not ultimately influence her decision either way.
The charges against Stone documented his false statements to Congress about his interactions involving WikiLeaks; his extensive communications with the far-right commentator Jerome Corsi and the radio host Randy Credico about WikiLeaks' document dumps of Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails in summer 2016, and Stone's extensive efforts to prevent Credico from testifying to Congress or cooperating with the FBI.
Not only is making false statements to Congress a crime in its own right, but the indictment said that Stone's misleading testimony deliberately obstructed ongoing investigations by the FBI, House Intelligence Committee, and Senate Intelligence Committee.
Stone came onto the political scene in the 1980s, developing a reputation as a "dirty trickster" who would stoop to any unsavory tactic for his clients. Stone established a Republican political consulting firm along with Manafort, who both became well-known lobbyists.
He began working with Trump in the 1980s and initially pushed him to run for president in 1988. While Trump declined to run then, Stone was behind Trump's ultimately failed Reform Party presidential bid in 2000 and his successful 2016 presidential campaign.
Sonam Sheth contributed to this report.
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