Roger Stone's sentencing hearing will go ahead as planned on Thursday, but his sentence will be deferred until after Judge Amy Berman Jackson rules on Stone's motion for a new trial, Judge Jackson says.
, the DOJ veterans said the government's legal decisions"must be impartial and insulated from political influence. Criminal prosecutions, they said, must be carried out"free from partisan consideration."
The original recommendation said a sentence of seven to nine years would"accurately reflect the seriousness" of Stone's crimes"and promote respect for the law." Stone's lies deterred Congress from subpoenaing evidence that could have documented his efforts to get an inside track on what WikiLeaks was planning, and he made threats against the talk show host, the filing said.
But in the revised document, the Justice Department noted that the radio host said he never felt threatened, that it was unclear whether Stone's comments had any effect on the trial, and that a shorter sentence would be comparable to punishments given to others convicted of lying to Congress. The filing did not actually recommend a sentence but said the original suggestion"could be considered excessive and unwarranted.
Stone, a Trump friend for more than 30 years who served as an adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, called himself the victim of a political prosecution. He was arrested a year ago and charged with misleading the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 about his efforts to find out when WikiLeaks would be releasing emails hacked from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The charges were the last to be filed by Mueller's team before its investigation ended. The prosecution was carried on by the U.S. attorney's office in Washington.Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.
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