The sentencing of Roger Stone — the longtime confidant of President Trump convicted last year of lying to Congress — will proceed as planned this week, a federal judge announced Tuesday.
Stone, 67, will learn his fate on Thursday despite his calls for a new trial, Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ruled, according to MSNBC.
“We’ve already put the sentencing off once,” Jackson reportedly said in a conference call with Stone’s lawyers and prosecutors, adding that “delaying the sentence would not be a prudent thing.”
Jackson did allow, however, for the imposition of the sentence to be postponed amid a motion filed by Stone’s defense team for a new trial, claiming that a juror had a history of anti-Trump sentiments on social media.
But the sentencing itself will proceed in the face of not only Stone’s objections, but those of Trump, who has publicly criticized the federal recommendation that Stone be slapped with seven to nine years, and on Tuesday renewed the push on Twitter.
“Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out,” wrote Trump. “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!”
Stone was convicted last year in a Washington, DC, court of all counts against him — obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering — for lying to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
He faced up to 20 years behind bars.
But the recommended seven to nine years wasn’t light enough for Trump, who tweeted that the idea was “horrible and very unfair.”
Trump on Tuesday also repeated critiques leveled against Jackson by former fellow jurist Andrew Napolitano.
Quoting Napolitano in an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Trump tweeted, “Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous & self outed bias of the foreperson of the jury, whose [sic] also a lawyer, by the way.
“‘Madam foreperson, your [sic] a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation, to reveal to us when we selected you the existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative about the President & the people who support him,” the president continued, still quoting Napolitano. “‘Don’t you think we wanted to know that before we put you on this jury.’”
Brass at the federal Department of Justice agreed with Trump after his initial criticism, leading four federal prosecutors on Stone’s case to quit in protest.
Attorney General William Barr, in a rare rebuke of the president, said Trump should lay off the tweeting because it makes “it impossible for me to do my job.”
With Post wires
