Roger Stone Sentenced To 3 Years, 4 Months In Prison For Lying To Congress

Roger Stone, the longtime GOP operative and Trump confidant, has been sentenced to 40 months behind bars for lying to Congress about his efforts to collaborate with WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign and threatening a witness to cover up his actions. 

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson handed down the sentence at a hearing in federal court in Washington on Thursday. Her decision comes amid intense controversy over Attorney General William Barr's highly unusual public intervention in the case over the government's recommended sentence, as well as President Trump's repeated public criticism of the case.

In addition to the prison sentence, Jackson said Stone must perform 250 hours of community service and pay a fine of $20,700.

A federal jury convicted Stone, 67, on seven charges of obstruction, making false statements and witness tampering in November 2019 in a case stemming from former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Jackson previously said Stone's sentence will be delayed until she rules on his request for a new trial.

The 40-month sentence is shorter than the seven to nine years prosecutors in the case originally recommended in a memorandum last week. Barr deemed that recommendation too harsh and overruled the prosecutors, prompting all four to withdraw from the case, with one resigning from the Justice Department outright. A new team of prosecutors filed a revised memo seeking an unspecified amount of prison time.

Surprisingly, the new prosecutors largely hewed to the original recommendation at Wednesday's hearing, arguing in favor of sentence enhancements that were included in the initial filing. 

Jackson called the original memorandum "well-researched" and "in accordance with the law," but said she thought a sentence of seven to nine years would be "greater than necessary." She strenuously rejected claims that Stone's prosecution was motivated by politics, as Mr. Trump and other allies have argued, and said she was imposing the sentence strictly based on the facts in the case.

"I am not here to judge Roger Stone the person," Jackson said. "That's for a higher authority."

At trial, prosecutors said Stone sought to collaborate with WikiLeaks over the release of stolen Democratic Party emails to damage Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign and subsequently lied to lawmakers about his involvement. They also said he threatened radio host Randy Credico not to cooperate in a congressional investigation.

Barr's move to overrule prosecutors sparked criticism of political interference in a federal investigation, as it came after the president publicly criticized the recommendation and tweeted that the case was a "miscarriage of justice." Barr denied discussing the case with Mr. Trump but said his tweets about active Justice Department cases make it "impossible for me to do my job."