The federal judge overseeing Roger Stone’s case has decided to go ahead with sentencing for Donald Trump’s longtime political advisor – despite a personal intervention by the president who complained online the case was ‘tainted.’
Judge Amy Berman Jackson held a scheduling call on the case with lawyers on Tuesday – after Stone’s team sought a retrial. Although she is willing to listen to their latest request, she said she won’t stall Stone’s sentencing – which has provoked an extraordinary clash between career prosecutors and the White House that has brought new scrutiny on the attorney general.
‘I am going to keep the sentencing where it is,’ Jackson said, even as Stone’s lawyers sought to delay proceedings.
‘I think that delaying this sentence would not be a prudent thing to do under all of the circumstances,’ she added.
Trump tweeted on a day Judge Amy Berman Jackson was to hold a scheduling conference on Roger Stone’s case
Roger Stone (R), the former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House with his wife Nydia Stone (L) on July 16, 2019 in Washington, DC. Stone appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in USA v. Stone
Jackson said she would rule on the Stone team’s request for a new trial later – and that the longtime political trickster won’t begin serving any sentence until that happens. Stone’s team had sought a new trial in a sealed motion filed Friday.
Jackson previously denied Stone’s request for a new trial based on what his team said was ‘bias’ of one of the jurors who is employed as a lawyer for the IRS. The juror had also been shown a Wall Street Journal article about the case.
Jackson’s decision Tuesday came despite some powerful outside commentary by the president of the United States.
Trump just hours earlier fired off a series of tweets backing a new trial for Stone, a longtime advisor, calling the government’s case ‘tainted.’
Trump’s comments come days after Attorney General Bill Barr issued an extraordinary admonition for Trump to stop tweeting about criminal cases – saying it makes it ‘impossible’ for him to do his job.
Judge Amy Berman last week denied a request by Stone’s lawyers for a new trial, while outside the courtroom the president repeatedly intervened publicly in the case on Stone’s behalf. They filed a separate sealed motion seeking a new trial on Friday.
President Trump ignored an admonition by his attorney general and tweeted about Roger Stone’s case
Trump called the case ‘badly tainted’
Trump tweeted comments by Judge Andrew Napolitano calling for a new trial for his longtime advisor
Trump tagged Judge Andrew Napolitano and Fox & Friends
Four prosecutors had themselves removed from the case last week, after the government cast aside their request in a motion filed with the court that Stone serve up to nine years in prison. The government changed its position and left it up to the court to decide on jail time following an early morning Tweet by Trump blasting the sentence as excessive.
More than former 2,000 Justice Department officials have signed onto a letter calling for Barr to resign.
Trump tore into the prosecutors once again Tuesday morning, almost exactly a week after his explosive public commentary on the case.
‘These were Mueller prosecutors, and the whole Mueller investigation was illegally set up based on a phony and now fully discredited Fake Dossier, lying and forging documents to the FISA Court, and many other things,’ he said, bringing up a series of grievances about the Russia probe.
President Donald Trump called the government lawyers on Roger Stone’s case ‘Mueller prosecutors’ and said their work was ‘badly tainted,’ as he tweeted support for his longtime advisor getting a new trial
Prosecutors spun off the Stone case from the Russia investigation, after concluding he lied about his contacts with WikiLeaks during his time as an advisor to Trump’s presidential campaign.
‘Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is … badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out,’ Trump wrote. ‘Even Mueller’s statement to Congress that he did not see me to become the FBI Director (again), has been proven false. The whole deal was a total SCAM. If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place…BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!’
Trump also retweeted supportive comments on his position from Fox commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano – who as it turns out last month said there was ‘ample and uncontradicted’ evidence for Trump’s removal from office.
Napolitano pointed out that the woman who served as the fore person on the jury has revealed to have run for Congress as a Democrat and had tweeted about the case immediately after Stone’s arrest.
‘Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous & self outed bias of the foreperson of the jury, whose also a lawyer, by the way. ‘Madam foreperson, your a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation, to reveal to us when we selected you the…existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative about the President & the people who support him.’
Attorney General Bill Barr
Napolitano continued: ‘Don’t you think we wanted to know that before we put you on this jury.’ Pretty obvious he should (get a new trial). I think almost any judge in the Country … would order a new trial, I’m not so sure about Judge Jackson, I don’t know,’ Trump wrote, tagging Napolitano and the Fox & Friends morning show.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell issued a statement last week saying: ‘Public criticism or pressure is not a factor’ in sentencing.
Howell is the chief judge of the court where Jackson sits. He said in the rare public statement: ‘The Judges of this Court base their sentencing decisions on careful consideration of the actual record in the case before them; the applicable sentencing guidelines and statutory factors; the submissions of the parties, the Probation Office and victims; and their own judgment and experience.’
Last week, after Trump’s repeated comments about the case, Barr told told ABC News in an interview: ‘I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.
‘I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,’ he said.
The push had no immediate effect. Trump responded Friday morning by noting that Barr had said Trump never asked him to do anything in a criminal case.
Then he added: ‘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!’
More than 2,000 former Justice Department officials weighed with a letter calling on Barr to resign amid a swirl of developments.
‘Mr. Barr’s actions in doing the President’s personal bidding unfortunately speak louder than his words. Those actions, and the damage they have done to the Department of Justice’s reputation for integrity and the rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign,’ according to the letter. ‘But because we have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice.’
President Trump responded to Attorney General William Barr’s statements by asserting his ‘legal right’ to intervene in criminal case