WASHINGTON — Roger J. Stone Jr., the Republican political consultant who for years portrayed himself as the dirty trickster of American politics, was being sentenced Thursday for obstructing a congressional inquiry in a bid to protect President Trump.
The case against Mr. Stone, 67, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, has become a cause célèbre among the president’s supporters. Mr. Trump has attacked the prosecutors, the jury forewoman and the federal judge overseeing the trial, casting his former campaign adviser as the victim of a vendetta by law enforcement.
Mr. Stone was convicted in November of lying to investigators under oath and trying to block the testimony of a witness who would have exposed his lies to the House Intelligence Committee. At the time, the panel was investigating whether Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.
His sentencing is playing out amid extraordinary upheaval at the Justice Department and a virtual standoff between the president and Attorney General William P. Barr over Mr. Trump’s comments about the case.
The president has criticized the jury’s November verdict, claiming that “the real crimes were on the other side.” He intensified those attacks last week after the prosecutors recommended that Mr. Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. Their request, Mr. Trump said, was “horrible and very unfair” and constituted a “miscarriage of justice.”
Almost simultaneously, Mr. Barr overruled the prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation and a new one was filed in court. It recommends a prison term well below seven to nine years but leaves the specific length of time up to the judge. The reversal, more aligned with Mr. Trump’s preference, led all four prosecutors to withdraw from the case. One of them resigned from the Justice Department entirely.
John Crabb Jr., a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, apologized during the sentencing hearing for “the confusion” over the government’s sentencing position and stressed that the prosecutors who quit from the case were not to blame for it.
He said that department policy is to follow the sentencing guidelines in recommending punishment, and those prosecutors did so. He also said the department continued to believe that aggravating factors in the case had boosted the penalty recommended under the guidelines for Mr. Stone fivefold. “The Department of Justice and the United States attorney’s office is committed to enforcing the law without fear, favor or political influence,” he said.
He said Mr. Stone’s offenses were serious and worthy of a “substantial period of incarceration,” but left it up to the judge to decide the right punishment. He blamed the competing sentencing memorandums on “miscommunication” between Timothy Shea, the interim United States attorney, and his superiors at Justice Department headquarters.
Judge Jackson questioned him closely about the process, asking whether he wrote the second sentencing memorandum or simply signed it. And she asked him point-blank about the last-minute switch in the prosecution team. “Why are you standing here today?” she demanded.
Mr. Crabb deflected some of her questions, saying, “I apologize I cannot engage in discussions of internal deliberations.”
The case ignited a broader controversy as former and current government lawyers accused Mr. Barr of failing to protect the department from improper political influence from the White House. In an open letter, more than 2,000 former Justice Department employees have called for Mr. Barr to resign, claiming “interference in the fair administration of justice” by both the attorney general and the president.
In a television interview last Thursday, Mr. Barr said he had decided to recommend a more lenient punishment for Mr. Stone based on the merits of the case. He also asked the president to stop publicly opining about the department’s criminal cases, saying it was making his job “impossible.”
But Mr. Trump has continued his commentary, putting him at loggerheads with Mr. Barr in a drama that has gripped Washington and seems to have no clear resolution.
After the hearing began, Mr. Trump again criticized the case as unfair, accusing two former F.B.I. officials, the former director James B. Comey and a former deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, of crimes that have not been charged or prosecuted.
In a last-ditch effort to delay the sentencing, Mr. Stone’s lawyers moved for a new trial on the basis of juror misconduct — a claim that Mr. Trump highlighted in one of his tweets.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said she would review the motion and the government’s response and would schedule a hearing if necessary. But she refused to put off Mr. Stone’s sentencing while those efforts were underway.
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February 20, 2020 at 05:00PM
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