Roger Stone's sentencing to move ahead after judge refuses new trial request

Roger Stone's sentencing to move ahead after judge refuses new trial request

Trump ally guilty on seven counts, including lying to Congress

President claims conviction ‘should be thrown out’

Lauren Gambino in Washington

 @laurenegambino

Thu 20 Feb 2020 07.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/20/roger-stone-sentence-judge-refuses-new-trial-request

Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Donald Trump and a self-described political dirty trickster, is set to be sentenced on Thursday for his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to the president.

The sentencing will go ahead despite an 11th-hour request by Stone’s defense team for a new trial following Trump’s claim that the conviction “should be thrown out”.

The judge, Amy Berman Jackson of the US district court for the District of Columbia, on Tuesday refused the motion, determining that postponing the sentencing would not be “a prudent thing to do given all the circumstances”.

Stone, 67, a flamboyant Republican operative who began his political career as a junior staffer on Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972, was convicted in November on seven felony charges, including lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Stone had denied wrongdoing.

His sentencing hearing followed an extraordinary series of events in which justice department officials overruled a sentencing recommendation by the prosecutors of between seven and nine years in federal prison, a punishment Trump assailed on Twitter as “horrible and very unfair”.

After the president assailed the prosecutors directly and decried a “miscarriage of justice”, the attorney general, William Barr, intervened and sought a more lenient punishment. His intervention prompted the entire prosecution team to resign, including one member who left the justice department altogether.

Barr – a close ally of the president – also publicly reproached Trump, saying the president’s online commentary about politically sensitive investigations makes it “impossible” for him to do his job.

Trump eventually said on Twitter that he had not asked the attorney general to “do anything in a criminal case”, but argued that, as president, he had “the legal right to do so” and had “so far chosen not to!”

Despite Barr’s rebuke, Trump continued to weigh in on the case on Twitter. On Tuesday, he quoted the Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano who claimed that the jury harbored biases against the president and that “almost any judge in the country” would throw out the conviction.

“Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out,” Trump wrote in another tweet.

Since Trump was acquitted by the Senate of charges that he abused power and obstructed Congress, he has embarked on a campaign of retribution against his perceived political enemies while intervening to protect allies who have been loyal. His defense of Stone came just days after the conclusion of the Senate impeachment trial. Trump has not ruled out pardoning his longtime friend.

Stone’s convictions stem from the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

During the course of the week-long trial, the jury heard from Steve Bannon, the president’s former campaign chairman, that Stone was the campaign’s “access point” to WikiLeaks, which published a trove of stolen Democratic emails in the final weeks of the last presidential campaign.

Among the other government witnesses was the comedian and radio personality Randy Credico, who Stone said was his “back channel” to WikiLeaks. Prosecutors accused Stone of trying to prevent Credico from contradicting his testimony before a House committee and encouraging him to lie or avoid speaking to congressional investigators or the FBI.

Credico testified during the trial that Stone encouraged him to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli’”, a reference to a character in The Godfather: Part II who lies before Congress. Prosecutors also presented evidence that Stone had threatened Credico’s beloved dog, Bianca.