February 11, 2020
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice will seek a shorter prison sentence for Roger Stone, a convicted associate of President Donald Trump, than the 7 to 9 years recommended by federal prosecutors, media outlets reported on Tuesday, hours after Trump tweeted that it was unfair.
Trump called out prosecutors over their proposed sentence for Stone, the colorful self-proclaimed political “dirty trickster” who was found guilty on charges stemming from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Trump tweeted early on Tuesday morning.
U.S. prosecutors, in a court filing on Monday, had said the 7- to 9-year sentence fell within guidelines and would “accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law.”
Stone faces a Feb. 20 sentencing after a jury found him guilty of seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.
Fox News, citing an unnamed senior Justice Department official, said the decision to scale back the requested sentence was made before Trump’s tweet and that top department officials had been shocked by prosecutors’ recommendation.
The Washington Post, NBC and Bloomberg also reported the move to seek a lighter sentence, although it was not immediately clear when any such filing would be made in the case being handled by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
“We look forward to reviewing the government’s supplemental filing,” Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, said in an email to Reuters.
Representatives for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the media reports.
Stone is one of several Trump associates charged with crimes as part of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, which Trump has long decried as a “witch hunt.”
In a court filing on Monday, prosecutors said that Trump’s 2016 campaign chief Steve Bannon “viewed Stone as the Trump campaign’s access point to WikiLeaks.”
Although Stone had posted tweets that made it appear that he had inside access to hacked materials related to Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign that were in WikiLeaks’ possession, prosecutors and people close to Stone have acknowledged that he had no direct access to WikiLeaks or its materials.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Brad Heath; writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
