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Roger Stone Sentencing Will Go On as Planned, Judge Says Trump Attacks Stone Prosecutors and Judge, Ignoring Barr’s Admonishment
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The sentencing of President Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. will go on as planned on Thursday despite last-ditch motions by his defense attorneys for a new trial, a judge said on Tuesday. WASHINGTON — President Trump renewed his attacks on law enforcement on Tuesday, denouncing the prosecutors and judge in the case of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. just days after Attorney General William P. Barr warned that the president’s criticisms were making it “impossible” to do his job.
The judge, Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, told lawyers in the case that she did not want to postpone sentencing Mr. Stone, a former campaign adviser to Mr. Trump. She also ruled that Mr. Stone’s defense lawyers could file an amended motion for a new trial, and that the government could respond to the defense’s arguments in writing, even after she sentences him. Undeterred, Mr. Trump kept up his barrage on Twitter. He directly quoted a “Fox & Friends” legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, who has insisted that the president “has every right to speak to” the attorney general about the Stone case. Mr. Trump has alleged bias by the jury forewoman and echoed calls for the judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson, to reconsider it.
Mr. Stone, 67, was convicted in November of seven felony charges, including tampering with a witness and lying under oath in order to obstruct a congressional inquiry into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election. An inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, ultimately found insufficient evidence to charge anyone associated with the campaign of conspiring with the Russians. “Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous & self outed bias of the foreperson,” Mr. Trump wrote, quoting Mr. Napolitano.
The four prosecutors who handled Mr. Stone’s jury trial recommended he be sentenced to between seven to nine years in prison. But after it was filed in court, Attorney General William P. Barr overruled their recommendation, saying it was excessively harsh. But Mr. Stone’s sentencing will go on as planned on Thursday despite last-ditch motions by his defense lawyers for a new trial, Judge Jackson said hours later on Tuesday. She said she would allow the defense to file an amended motion for a new trial, give the government a chance to respond and schedule a hearing if warranted. Defense lawyers are trying to argue that juror misconduct led to an unfair trial.
The prosecutors then withdrew from the case in protest and one of them quit the department, triggering widespread consternation within the department about whether Mr. Barr intervened in order to satisfy Mr. Trump’s wishes. On Twitter, Mr. Trump has criticized the prosecutors, the forewoman of the jury and Judge Jackson. The handling of Mr. Stone’s case has generated tumult in the Justice Department after Attorney General William P. Barr scrapped the prosecution team’s sentencing recommendation in favor of a much lighter one, leading four government lawyers to withdraw from the case. Mr. Trump also attacked the initial sentencing request.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates. The president also again assailed the lawyers, saying that if he were not president, he would sue them. Two of the four worked for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, whose investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election led to the indictments of Mr. Stone and five other former Trump aides.
Mr. Stone, 67, was convicted in November of seven felony charges, including tampering with a witness and lying under oath in order to obstruct a congressional inquiry into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mr. Mueller’s inquiry ultimately found insufficient evidence to charge anyone associated with the campaign of conspiring with the Russians.
In a court filing last week, the prosecutors who handled Mr. Stone’s jury trial recommended that he be sentenced to between seven and nine years in prison. But Mr. Barr overruled their recommendation, saying it was excessively harsh.
His decision coincided with Mr. Trump’s criticism of the sentencing request as a “miscarriage of justice,” though Mr. Barr said he was not influenced by the president’s views. The prosecutors then abruptly pulled out of the case and more than 1,100 former prosecutors and department lawyers called on Mr. Barr to resign, saying he had failed to protect the department from political pressure.
Mr. Barr defended his decision on national television last week, saying the recommendation for up to nine years was far too harsh. But he also that Mr. Trump’s running commentary on the department’s cases was making his job impossible and undermining his credibility and had to stop.
The next morning, Mr. Trump pushed back, citing another comment of Mr. Barr’s affirming that the president never asked him to act in a criminal case. “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
But that was relatively muted compared to his more belligerent verbal assaults on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump’s attacks on Judge Jackson appeared to trigger broad concern within Washington’s legal establishment. The Federal Judges Association, a voluntary organization, scheduled an emergency telephone conference for this week.
Federal District Judge Cynthia Rufe told USA Today that the group wanted to discuss “plenty of issues that we are concerned about.”