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Thread: Stone faces sentencing amid political firestorm

  1. #1

    Exclamation Stone faces sentencing amid political firestorm

    Stone to be sentenced TOMORROW. No idea what time but this is a thread to keep track of everything. Please post any news or articles etc. in here...

    Roger Stone is set to be sentenced Thursday in the midst of a growing political controversy after the Trump administration intervened in his case to push for a lighter prison sentence than originally sought by prosecutors.

    President Trump himself helped ignite the controversy, loudly calling for a light sentence for his longtime ally, attacking the original prosecution team and using the case to declare himself the nation’s “chief law enforcement officer.”

    A firestorm engulfing the sentencing process over the past week has quickly eclipsed the facts of the case, which centers around what Stone told Congress about his role as a back channel between the 2016 Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which was releasing damaging stolen emails from then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee at the time.

    A jury convicted Stone in November of seven counts of lying to Congress and witness tampering following a trial that featured testimony from former Trump campaign officials Stephen Bannon and Richard Gates.

    Last week, the prosecutors in the case, which stemmed from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, recommended that Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. But the next day, the Trump administration retracted the sentencing memo and suggested a lighter punishment.

    That prompted an uproar as the original prosecution team withdrew from the case, with one of the attorneys even resigning from his post.

    The reversal is the latest effort from Attorney General William Barr to insert himself in the cases brought by Mueller’s team. Last week, the New York Times reported that Barr had brought in an outside prosecutor to review the case against Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whose plea agreement with Mueller over charges of lying to investigators has fallen apart in recent weeks.

    Trump has inserted himself into the controversy, railing on Twitter against the prosecutors, the Obama-appointed judge presiding over Stone’s case and the forewoman of the trial jury. On Tuesday, he continued to vent against the Mueller investigation and even suggested he might sue the officials behind it.

    “Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets on Tuesday. “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 publicly backed Stone's lawyers' request for a new trial, which they submitted to the court last week in a sealed motion. The president says that he has not pressured Barr on the Stone and Flynn cases while at the same time insisting that he has the right to do so if he wishes.

    “Just so you understand: I chose not to be involved,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I'm allowed to be totally involved. I'm actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country, but I've chosen not to be involved.”

    The furor over Trump's remarks also led to a rare public break between the president and his attorney general. Barr in an interview warned Trump against commenting on active criminal cases and said his tweets made it "impossible" for the attorney general to do his job.

    Also hanging over the Stone case since it began is the question of whether Trump will pardon his longtime ally and former adviser. The New York Times has reported that the president brought up the idea to his aides, but Trump denied giving it any thought in his comments to reporters on Tuesday.

    But this week, Trump flexed his pardon power in a way that critics construed as a message to Stone and Flynn. On Tuesday, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of 11 people, including Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was serving a 14-year prison sentence for trying to sell a Senate seat, and other noted white-collar criminals.

    Trump and the Justice Department's moves over the past week have brought new uncertainty around Thursday’s sentencing.

    Stone’s legal team and the original prosecutors agreed that federal sentencing guidelines recommend a base sentence of somewhere between one and two years in prison. The prosecutors had argued that several factors in the case point toward a significant sentencing enhancement of between seven and nine years. Justice Department officials overruled that recommendation, asking the judge for a sentence that was "far less."

    Stone’s attorneys told the judge that the facts of the case lend themselves in favor of a more lenient sentence, without jail time. His lawyers also cited Stone’s character in asking for a lighter sentence.

    “As a 67-year-old first time offender convicted of serious but non-violent crimes, Roger Stone’s history and characteristics support a sentence below the advisory Guidelines range of imprisonment,” Stone’s legal team wrote in a filing last week. “As detailed in the accompanying letters from his family and friends, Roger Stone is far more than the persona he projects in the media.”

    But it’s unclear how Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will interpret the conflicting recommendations from the Justice Department.

    Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor who served nearly 30 years at the Justice Department under Democratic and Republican administrations, says he doesn’t believe that Jackson’s sentencing decision will be influenced by the turmoil that’s engulfed the case in recent days.

    “I think Judge Amy Jackson will give it the weight it deserves and that is nothing,” Rossi said. “She can see through what has happened. The prosecutors filed a memo asking for seven to nine years and I have to stress that they followed the sentencing guidelines, which is the bible to federal career prosecutors.”

    Rossi said that he would guess the judge would choose a sentence somewhere between the guidelines’ base sentence recommendation of one to two years and the prosecution’s original recommendation of seven to nine.

    What is clear is that Trump has felt emboldened since his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial and is speaking out in defense of his embattled associates.

    “I think Roger Stone has been treated unfairly,” he said Tuesday. “I think General Flynn has been treated very unfairly. I think a lot of people have been treated very unfairly.”

    Asked whether he believes Stone should serve any prison time, the president responded, “Let’s see what happens.”
    https://thehill.com/regulation/court...ical-firestorm



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  3. #2

    Lightbulb Got to get your mind right, Luke

    Needs at least 20 years to get his mind right.




    What we have here is a failure to communicate.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You only show up to attack Trump when he is wrong
    Make America the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave again

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by RonZeplin View Post
    Needs at least 20 years to get his mind right.
    I've read all of the charges they say he is guilty of and its nothing I or most people I know, wouldn't do if they were in his shoes.

    What is it that RPF'ers used to say? no victim no crime.
    THE SQUAD of RPF
    1. enhanced_deficit - Paid Troll / John Bolton book promoter
    2. Devil21 - LARPing Wizard, fake magical script reader
    3. Firestarter - Tax Troll; anti-tax = "criminal behavior"
    4. TheCount - Comet Pizza Pedo Denier <-- sick

    @Ehanced_Deficit's real agenda on RPF =troll:

    Who spends this much time copy/pasting the same recycled links, photos/talking points.

    7 yrs/25k posts later RPF'ers still respond to this troll

  5. #4
    He's going to get a severe sentence from the (D) judge. The question is will Trump announce the pardon the very same afternoon so Roger doesn't spend one night in prison or will he leave him to rot ?

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Warlord View Post
    He's going to get a severe sentence from the (D) judge. The question is will Trump announce the pardon the very same afternoon so Roger doesn't spend one night in prison or will he leave him to rot ?
    LOL.. pretty sure there exists somewhere in between.

    Stone will be taken care of. He was Trump's wingman back in the day.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Warlord View Post
    He's going to get a severe sentence from the (D) judge. The question is will Trump announce the pardon the very same afternoon so Roger doesn't spend one night in prison or will he leave him to rot ?
    Roger Stone is one of Trump's best friends. Theres no way hes going to let him live out the entire sentence. He is going to get pardoned, I'm just not sure if he'll do it now or wait until the end of his second term.
    "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."

    Calvin Coolidge

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    I've read all of the charges they say he is guilty of and its nothing I or most people I know, wouldn't do if they were in his shoes.

    What is it that RPF'ers used to say? no victim no crime.
    RonZ doesn't care about justice, he just cares about hanging Trump and anyone connected to him.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  9. #8
    Tucker Carlson ended his show on Wednesday discussing the travesty of the Roger Stone trial.

    Roger Stone will be in court on Thursday morning for sentencing from the corrupt Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a rogue, demonic anti-Trump activist.

    Tucker Carlson did offer this hope to Roger Stone.


    https://youtu.be/THyYVT7kGYY
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/202...do-that-video/



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    RonZ doesn't care about justice, he just cares about hanging Trump and anyone connected to him.

    The federal prosecutorial complex is just as corrupt as anything else you can name.

    @RonZeplin should not let Trump Derangement Syndrome get in the way.
    Last edited by eleganz; 02-19-2020 at 09:47 PM.
    THE SQUAD of RPF
    1. enhanced_deficit - Paid Troll / John Bolton book promoter
    2. Devil21 - LARPing Wizard, fake magical script reader
    3. Firestarter - Tax Troll; anti-tax = "criminal behavior"
    4. TheCount - Comet Pizza Pedo Denier <-- sick

    @Ehanced_Deficit's real agenda on RPF =troll:

    Who spends this much time copy/pasting the same recycled links, photos/talking points.

    7 yrs/25k posts later RPF'ers still respond to this troll

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    The federal prosecutorial complex is just as corrupt as anything else you can name.


    Don't let your Trump Derangement Syndrome get in the way.
    You're right. Prosecutors are scum.

  13. #11
    I hope so. I think it will actually help him politically by bringing more attention to the prosecutorial misconduct by Democrats. Independents do not want to see people prosecuted for their political persuasions.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by eleganz View Post
    I've read all of the charges they say he is guilty of and its nothing I or most people I know, wouldn't do if they were in his shoes.

    What is it that RPF'ers used to say? no victim no crime.
    It's called sarcasm or irony.
    There is no spoon.

  15. #13

    Exclamation Roger Stone's sentencing coming up...

    U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson is scheduled to sentence Stone... at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT).
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ce/ar-BB10c66R

    Hopefully this C-SPAN link is going to go live (?) ("Live" function not working for me at the moment)

    "News cameras and reporters await reaction to the sentencing by a federal court of former Trump associate Roger Stone for convictions on criminal counts, including lying to Congress and witness tampering."
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?469528...-stakeout&live
    Last edited by Valli6; 02-20-2020 at 09:10 AM.

  16. #14

  17. #15

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/sta...24989469683714

    This guy - Josh Gerstein - Senior Legal Affairs Contributor, POLITICO - is live tweeting:
    https://twitter.com/joshgerstein
    This guy too - - Darren Samuelsohn also from Politico
    https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/stat...17563739836423

    Judge Jackson rules she will give Stone a stronger sentence b/c of his social media campaign challenging his prosecution: "This is intolerable to the administration of justice and the courts should not sit idly by, shrug its shoulders and just say it's 'Roger being Roger.'" https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/stat...22822935678977
    Judge says crosshairs post merits enhancement for interfering with admin of justice. 'He willfully increased the risk that someone with even poorer judgment than he has' would become violent. https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/sta...23066532401152
    Stone WILL NOT address court today, he says. Judge is taking a break before delivering sentence.
    8:21 AM - 20 Feb 2020 https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/sta...27953353748480
    Last edited by Valli6; 02-20-2020 at 10:23 AM.

  18. #16
    FWIW: Judge Nap on juror Tomeka Hart and what might happen today and why.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_aI...ture=emb_title



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  20. #17
    I told you she is going to give something like 8 years.

  21. #18
    No live stream?

    What kind of show trial is this?
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Valli6 View Post
    FWIW: Judge Nap on juror Tomeka Hart and what might happen today and why.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_aI...ture=emb_title
    Pardon Assange & Manning first, and maybe Stone someday.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You only show up to attack Trump when he is wrong
    Make America the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave again

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by RonZeplin View Post
    Pardon Assange

    Trump already offered Assange a pardon.

    Were you gone yesterday?
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    Trump already offered Assange a pardon.

    Were you gone yesterday?
    Fake News.

    That pardon offer is as fake as the Javanka, Israel Palestine "peace deal".
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You only show up to attack Trump when he is wrong
    Make America the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave again

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by RonZeplin View Post
    Fake News.

    That pardon offer is as fake as the Javanka, Israel Palestine "peace deal".
    You seem to have no problem constantly throwing your credibility out into the middle of the freeway to get run over.

    Trump offered Assange a full pardon, all he has to do is testify to what he has already said many times on twitter.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  26. #23
    Fox news just reported, 40 months.

    3 years and 4 months.

    ...Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison and pay a $20,000 fine on Thursday for witness tampering and lying to Congress. He will be on probation upon his release.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...tone-sentenced
    Last edited by Valli6; 02-20-2020 at 11:42 AM.

  27. #24
    Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison on Thursday for lying to Congress and witness tampering amid a firestorm of controversy as the Trump administration pushed for a lighter sentence for the longtime political provocateur.

    Thursday's sentencing hearing follows a tumultuous stretch that saw President Trump attack the original prosecutors, the judge and the jury in the case on behalf of his onetime adviser. And it follows the withdrawal of the original prosecution team from the case after the Justice Department amended their recommendation that Stone serve seven to nine years in prison.

    During the hearing, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sharply questioned the new attorney for the prosecution, John Crabb Jr. of the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, over the administration's sentencing reversal.

    Crabb demurred when Jackson asked whether he actually wrote the updated sentencing memo that the government submitted under his name last week or if his superiors at the Justice Department had directed him to ask for a sentence "far less" than the original recommendation. He said that he was not authorized to discuss internal department deliberations in open court.

    Still, Crabb was conciliatory in his courtroom remarks, praising the original prosecution team and insisting that the Justice Department is cmmitted to doing its job without "fear or favor." Despite amending the original sentencing recommendation, he argued that Stone still deserves a "substantial" prison sentence.

    That controversy has overshadowed the case, in which prosecutors accused Stone of lying to Congress about his contacts with associates he believed to have been communicating with WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to feed inside information to then-candidate Trump. He was also charged with pressuring a witness into not cooperating with congressional investigators.

    Prosecutors alleged during trial that Stone lied in 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee, which was investigating Russian interference in the election, in an effort to protect the president, who was still in the early months of his administration.

    “The evidence in this case will show that Roger Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee because the truth looked bad — the truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump,” Aaron Zelinsky, one of the prosecutors in the case, told the jury in November.

    Zelinsky and the rest of the original prosecution team withdrew from the case last week after Attorney General William Barr overruled their sentencing recommendation. One of the attorneys on the team resigned from the Justice Department.

    The sentence is sure to increase speculation that Trump will pardon Stone. The president said publicly this week that he hasn't given it any thought, but a round of high-profile pardons and commutations this week was seen by many as a message intended for Stone and other Trump associates facing prison time.

    Stone's lawyers asked Jackson, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for a new trial in a sealed motion submitted last week. Jackson said that Stone's sentence will be delayed from going into effect until after the motion is settled.
    https://thehill.com/regulation/court...es-roger-stone



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  29. #25
    https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/st...56202779602947


  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/st...56202779602947

    I heard exactly one person in the crowd chanting "lock him up".
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    I heard exactly one person in the crowd chanting "lock him up".
    And that's how rumors get started ....

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    I heard exactly one person in the crowd chanting "lock him up".
    CNN's camera man.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    I heard exactly one person in the crowd chanting "lock him up".
    RonZ?
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  34. #30

    Stone's attorneys have filed a motion to disqualify Judge Amy Berman Jackson

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...n-judge-116696
    by KYLE CHENEY (Politico)
    02/21/2020 11:31 PM EST
    ...moved Friday to disqualify the judge in his case, claiming her remarks at his sentencing rendered her unable to fairly rule on his bid for a new trial.

    Stone's lawyers say, in particular, that Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision to assert that jurors in the case "served with integrity" strikes at the heart of Stone's motion for a new trial, which they indicated is largely based on whether at least one juror was inappropriately biased against him.

    "Whether the subject juror (and perhaps others) served with 'integrity' is one of the paramount questions presented in the pending Motion," Stone's lawyers argued. "The Court’s ardent conclusion of 'integrity' indicates an inability to reserve judgment on an issue which has yet been heard."

    Berman Jackson made her remark during an impassioned rebuke of the arguments Stone's legal team offered during his trial. She said that Stone and his lawyers minimized the significance of his effort to frustrate congressional investigators as they sought to understand Russia's interference in the 2016 election, a grave national security challenge.

    "Sure, the defense is free to say: So what? Who cares?" Berman Jackson said. "But, I'll say this: Congress cared. The United States Department of Justice and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia that prosecuted the case and is still prosecuting the case cared. The jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. The American people cared. And I care."...

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...n-judge-116696
    Last edited by Valli6; 02-21-2020 at 10:54 PM.



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