Donald Trump confidante Roger Stone has been sentenced to only 40 months in prison, in spite of the recommendations of his former prosecutors.
Those prosecutors said Stone should get up to nine years in prison. Judge Amy Berman Jackson instead sentenced him to three years and four months – the lawyers’ advice mattered not.
Stone’s original four prosecutors with the Department of Justice recommended nine years in federal prison for charges including lying to Congress. However, after making their recommendation public, higher-ups in the Department of Justice swiftly retracted the recommendation.
Notably, president Donald Trump complained about Stone’s sentencing on Twitter, alleging that the prosecutors over his case were “Mueller’s people.” The president was referring to the former special counsel who oversaw an investigation into Trump’s dealings with Russia in the 2016 election.
The DOJ has made public statements that suggest the Stone case has created turmoil in the Department. Even the day of Stone’s sentencing, some prosecutors were still urging the judge to issue Stone a “substantial” sentence.
At the same time, higher-ups in the DOJ asked that Stone be shown leniency in the face of his crimes.
For Stone’s part, his actual sentence came down to three years and four months. This was based on seven charges of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering. This sentence is surprisingly light when you consider the weight of Stone’s crimes.
The court found Stone guilty of numerous crimes. The Mueller Report exposed these crimes. After the higher-ups in the DOJ retracted Stone’s original sentence, the original prosecutors all withdrew from the department.
Trump continued to talk about the case on Twitter. His inflammatory statements made Attorney General William Barr assert that Trump needed to stop pushing the envelope online.
This was surprising. Barr had always been a supporter of the president’s online antics until this point.
