Donald Trump on Thursday said he wasn’t going to pardon Roger Stone for now and noted he thinks his long time adviser will get cleared on a retrial.
‘Roger has a very good chance of exoneration in my opinion,’ the president said at Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, where he delivered the commencement speech for the Hope for Prisoners graduating class.
He attacked the Stone issue head on as speculation swirled he would issue a pardon to his longtime adviser, who was sentenced to 40 months in prison Thursday for lying to Congress. Stone was spared immediate incarceration while U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson decides whether or not to grant his request for a retrial.
In the 12 minutes he talked about the Stone case, President Trump bemoaned how Stone was treated unfairly while Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted for her private email server.
Donald Trump said he wasn’t going to pardon Roger Stone for now after Stone was sentenced to 44 months in prison for lying to Congress
The president did say he thinks Roger Stone was treated unfairly and will be cleared in a retrial, which Stone’s lawyers have requested
The president had issued a rash of presidential pardons this week, leading to speculation Stone would be the next person to receive one.
But instead Trump said he was watching how the legal process played out.
‘I am following this very closely, and I want to see it play out to its fullest,’ the president said.
‘I’m not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the United States. I want the process to play out. I think that is the best thing to do. Because I would love to see Roger exonerated, and I would love to see it happen. Because I personally think that he was treated very unfairly,’ Trump said of his longtime adviser.
He complained Stone was treated unfairly compared to Clinton, who Trump has long targeted. ‘Lock her up’ was his signature campaign line during the 2016 election, which his supporters shouted while Trump complained about his then-Democratic rival’s use of a private email server.
Trump returned to that complaint Thursday while he waxed on about Stone’s case.
‘Hillary Clinton leaked more classified documents than any human being, I believe in the history of the United States of America,’ Trump said. ‘And she deleted 33,000 emails.’
President Trump complained Roger Stone was treated unfairly compared to Hillary Clinton
Trump has long complained that Hillary Clinton wasn’t prosecuted for using a private email server when she was secretary of state
President Trump spoke to the ‘Hope for Prisoners’ graduation class in Las Vegas; above he poses with one of the graduates
He added that Clinton said the ’emails were about her yoga classes and her exercising and her daughter’s wedding. 33,000 about her daughter’s wedding – that must have been the greatest wedding of all time. And nothing happened to her.’
Clinton, while secretary of state for President Barack Obama, used a private email server for official government business.
Then-FBI director James Comey, after an official investigation, said Clinton had been ‘extremely careless’ in her use of the server but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Trump railed against her as ‘Crooked Hillary’ during their presidential contest.
Trump reissued his complaints about Comey, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and ‘dirty cops.’
‘We had a lot of dirty cops. The FBI is phenomenal. I love the FBI. But the people at the top are dirty cops,’ he said.
‘I know Roger, but a lot of people know Roger. Everybody sort of knows Roger. What happened to him is unbelievable. They say he lied but other people lied to. Just to mention, Comey lied, McCabe lied, Lisa Page lied, her lover, Peter Strzok, lied. You don’t know who these people are? Just trust me,’ he said.
Stone was convicted last fall of lying to lawmakers over his efforts to procure stolen Democratic Party emails from WikiLeaks in 2016 to boost Trump’s chances of becoming President. He was sentenced Thursday.
But Trump denied Stone worked for his 2016 presidential campaign.
‘Roger was never involved in the Trump campaign for president. He was not involved. I think early on long before I announced he may have done a little consulting work or something, but he was not involved when I ran for president,’ the president said during his remarks.
Trump then pivoted to attack the jury forewoman in Stone’s trial, Tomeka Hart, who the president accused of being an anti-Trumper.
Stone’s lawyers pointed to some social media posts written by Hart on Facebook as one of the reasons they requested a retrial for Stone. Hart posted her appreciation for the four federal prosecutors who resigned after Attorney General Bill Barr interfered in the Stone case.
Trump said Hart was ‘tainted.’
‘The woman who was in charge of the jury is totally tainted when you take a look. How can you have a person like this? She was an anti-Trump activist,’ he said.
The prosecutors in Stone’s case resigned after the Justice Department intervened and lowered the sentencing recommendation for Stone.
Hart praised their work and outed herself as the jury forewoman in Stone’s trial in the aftermath.
‘It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice,’ she wrote on Facebook.
Hart, it further emerged, had unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012 and had participated in anti-Trump rallies and protests.
She had frequently denounced Trump on social media, calling the President and his supporters racists, and posted emojis of hearts and fist pumps after finding Stone guilty last November.
Hart had also re-tweeted a post by pundit Bakari Sellers dismissing Stone’s claims that the FBI used excessive force when they arrested him at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home in January 2019.
Trump disparaged Hart during his remarks to the graduating class of prisoners.
‘This is a woman who was an anti-Trump person, totally. I don’t know if this is a fact. But she had a horrible social media accounts, the things that she said on the accounts were unbelievable. She did not reveal that when she was chosen. And she is I guess, from what I hear a very strong woman and dominant person, so she can get people to do whatever she wants.’
He complained this meant Stone couldn’t get a fair trial.
‘Does this undermine our fair system of justice? How can you have a person like this? Did she delete her social account? And when Roger was determined by the same jury to be guilty before the judge issued a sentence, and he was determined to be guilty, and she started going a little wild. She was very happy,’ he said.
He argued this was a strong reason for the judge in the case to declare a retrial.
‘So if this woman was tainted, I hope that the judge will find that she was tainted,’ Trump said.
‘It is not fair,’ he added. ‘I am here to make a fair system.’
‘We will watch the process and watch it very closely. And at some point I will make a determination. But Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process,’ Trump said.
Free to go – for now: Roger Stone is escorted from the Washington D.C. federal courthouse after his sentencing. He remains gagged from speaking to the press
At Stone’s sentencing hearing on Thursday in Washington D.C., U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a stunning rebuke not just of Stone but of the president himself, saying the prosecution was not brought by ‘political enemies,’ and that there was no ‘anti-Trump cabal’ at the hear of the case.
‘He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president, he was prosecuted for covering up for the president,’ she said.
‘There was nothing unfair, phony or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.’
Trump tweeted in rage against the prosecution accusing it of lacking ‘FAIRNESS’ as the hearing was under way in federal court in Washington D.C.
”They say Roger Stone lied to Congress.’ OH, I see, but so did Comey (and he also leaked classified information, for which almost everyone, other than Crooked Hillary Clinton, goes to jail for a long time), and so did Andy McCabe, who also lied to the FBI! FAIRNESS?’ the president tweeted.
It was unknown whether Berman Jackson was aware of his latest intervention but it came amid a case roiled by politics and mounting speculation Stone will be pardoned.
Even before she spoke, prosecutors staged their own revolt against the president calling the case ‘righteous’ and demanding a lengthy prison sentence despite their initial call for nine years being over-ruled by Attorney General Bill Barr in one of the main acts of an unfolding constitutional crisis.
Stone, 67, stood in silence as Jackson told a federal courtroom Washington, D.C. that he should spend 40 months -three years and four months – behind bars.
She had savaged him in his sentencing remarks – and rebuked the president himself, possibly for his tweet this morning which was during the first part of her hearing.
‘This case did not arise because Roger Stone was being prosecuted by his political enemies,’ Berman Jackson said.
She said Stone told ‘flat out lies,’ and that his conviction had nothing to do with whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
He was guilty of a ‘corrupt, unlawful,’ campaign to stop his lies being exposed when he threatened Randy Credico, who he named as his ‘go-between’ to Julian Assange, to stop Credico revealing the truth, that there was another go-between.
Stone was also guilty of withholding texts and emails from Congress, prompting Berman Jackson to again lash out at the president.
Happy outcome: A grinning Roger Stone left the court to get into a waiting car
On his way: Roger Stone steps out of the court and into the crowd after his sentencing
Off – but not to prison: Roger Stone left court apparently cheerful after he was sentenced to 40 months, not the nine years prosecutors wanted, but not the probation he had asked for himself
Not over: Roger Stone’s case is not at an end because he has applied for a retrial, which the judge is considering. She went ahead with the sentencing and will rule later on his call for a fresh hearing
Crowd: Roger Stone walked through a crowd of waiting photographers and reporters as he left the court
Grinning: Roger Stone had shown no emotion as he was sentenced, and left the court building with a smile on his face
Lightning rod: Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson will sentence Roger Stone in a case which has caused a crisis to engulf Bill Barr who pleaded with Donald Trump to let him do his job and stop the tweeting about his Department of Justice
Stone refused to hand them over ‘not to some secret anti Trump cabal, but to Congress, to the elected representatives of both parties.’
And she pointed out that it was a Republican-led inquiry which he had initially defied.
Then she laced into the president, without naming him, saying it was right for sentencing to be done by a judge, ‘Not someone who has a longstanding friendship with the defendant, not someone whose political career was aided by the defendant.’
Stone was joined by a vast entourage led by his wife Nydia as he walked into the federal court, where his legal team has been bolstered by a Mafia lawyer who helped keep John Gotti Jr., head of the Gambino crime family and son of the ‘Teflon Don,’ out of prison.
Pro-Stone demonstrators brought a ‘pardon Roger Stone’ banner which they held behind him when he arrived while counter-protesters tried to hurriedly erect an inflatable effigy of Trump as a rat as Stone arrived.
Hours before he arrived Trump launched another fusillade against Stone’s conviction, tweeting: ‘What has happened to Roger Stone should never happen to anyone in our country again.’
Trump’s tweets have plunged his own attorney general, Bill Barr, into a crisis over the rule of law, with the president declaring himself the ‘chief law enforcement officer,’ and demanding Barr ‘clean house.’
His wife Nydia was behind him in the courtroom as Stone, wearing a dark gray chalk stripe double-breasted suit, blue shirt with cutaway collar and sober gray tie, sat beside his attorneys.
Department of Justice attorneys had originally requested a far harsher punishment of seven to nine years only to see their recommendation ripped up by Attorney General William Barr, who drew praise from Trump for labeling it ‘excessive and unwarranted’.
The intervention sparked accusations of political interference, forcing Barr on the defensive as he denied bowing to White House influence and appealed for Trump to curb his explosive Twitter criticisms of Judge Jackson and the supposedly ‘tainted’ case against Stone.
More than 2,000 former justice department employees have since signed a petition calling on the Attorney General to resign.
The original prosecution foursome of Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Michael Marando were replaced for today’s proceedings at Washington, D.C. District Court, having all resigned in protest.
Stone’s sentencing got off to a rocky start when Berman Jackson said that anyone in the court who did not have a medical reason to wear sunglasses should remove them. Stone had arrived in round sunglasses.
Jackson took the opportunity to grill prosecutors on why the Department of Justice decided last week to submit a second sentencing memorandum, a nod to Attorney General William Barr’s controversial decision to rip up the original seven to nine year recommendation submitted by his own attorneys.
It fell upon newly-assigned federal prosecutor John Crabb to apologize for the ‘miscommunication’, insisting that the original prosecution team – who resigned last week in protest – had acted in ‘good faith’.
Stone stood in silence as Jackson recalled the seven offences of which he was convicted: five counts of making false statements to Congress, a single count of obstructing a congressional proceeding and single count of witness tampering.
That final charge would be of particular significance as she warned Stone his sentence would likely be higher because it involved specific threats of violence.
Last November’s trial heard how Stone bullied the radio host Randy Credico into pleading the Fifth to avoid contradicting his 2016 testimony before Congress, branding him a ‘rat’ and threatening to take away his therapy dog.
Political point: An anti-Bill Barr protest was being made outside the federal court while Roger Stone was being sentenced – resulting in the advertising van being pulled over by D.C. cops
He’s here: Roger Stone was accompanied by his wife Nydia and an almost 20-strong entourage as he arrived at federal court in Washington D.C. to be sentenced
In front of the protest: Roger and Nydia Stone walked past the inflatable Trump rat as they made their way into court
Grin and bear it: Roger Stone kept a fixed smile as he headed into court with his wife Nydia on his arm
Raised a smile: Roger Stone’s wife Nydia reacted positively to a group of supporters’ banner calling for Donald Trump to issue the dirty trickster with a pardon
Arm-in-arm: Roger Stone wore a navy blue double-breasted topcoat with contrasting collar, blue cutaway collared shirt and sober gray tie, topped off with a black trilby as he arrived in court with Nydia, his second wife
Asked if he had anything to say, Stone, dressed immaculately in a pinstripe suit, grey tie and suspenders, told Washington, D.C. District Court: ‘Your honor I choose not to speak at this time, thank you very much.’
Jackson slammed the 67-year-old defendant as an ‘insecure person who craves and recklessly pursues attention.’
‘This case did not arise because Roger Stone was being pursued by his political enemies,’ she added.
‘It arose because Roger Stone characteristically injected himself smack into the middle of one of the most significant issues of the day.’
Judge Jackson said Stone had interfered with matters of ‘grave national importance’ and repeatedly lied under oath. She characterized his defense as: ‘So what?’
‘Nothing about this case was a joke. It wasn’t funny,’ she cautioned.
‘This was not Roger being Roger. He lied to congress, he lied to elected representatives.’
The no-nonsense judge praised the ‘professionalism’ of the original four prosecutors, saying their recommendation was ‘true to the record’ and in line with Department of Justice guidelines.
However she agreed with Barr’s revision and said she was concerned seven to nine years would be ‘greater than necessary.’
She sentenced Stone to 40 months for obstruction, 12 months each for the counts of lying to Congress and 18 months for witness tampering, all sentences to be served concurrently.
He was also fined $20,000 and will have to serve two years’ probation. Federal rules means he has to give the court his tax returns.
Stone’s decades-long career on the shadier margins of US politics appeared to be over last November after he was found guilty of five counts of making false statements to Congress and single counts of obstructing a congressional proceeding and witness tampering.
Jurors agreed the smooth-talking agent provocateur, who briefly served on Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, told a series of ‘whoppers’ when he testified before members of House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Stone lied to lawmakers when he denied asking Julian Assange for the cache of Democratic Party messages stolen by Russian hackers and further lied about the identity of his go-between to the WikiLeaks founder.
He also concealed numerous texts, emails and telephone conversations in which he discussed WikiLeaks and Assange with then candidate-Trump and senior campaign figures including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, ex Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and former campaign official Rick Gates.