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Roger Stone Is Sentenced to Over 3 Years in Prison

The sentencing played out amid extraordinary upheaval at the Justice Department and a virtual standoff between the president and the attorney general.

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Roger Stone Leaves Courthouse After Sentencing

Roger J. Stone Jr., the Republican political consultant and friend of President Trump, was sentenced to more than three years in prison for obstructing a congressional inquiry.

[crowd shouting] [crowd shouting] “Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!”

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Roger J. Stone Jr., the Republican political consultant and friend of President Trump, was sentenced to more than three years in prison for obstructing a congressional inquiry.CreditCredit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend and adviser of President Trump, was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in prison in a politically fraught case that put the president at odds with his attorney general, stirred widespread consternation in the Justice Department and provoked the judge in the case to denounce pressure on the justice system.

In announcing the 40-month sentence, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of United States District Court in Washington suggested that attacks on federal judges, prosecutors and juries should be a wake-up call about the threats now endangering an independent justice system. While she never mentioned Mr. Trump by name, her remarks seemed directed at him.

“The dismay and the disgust at the attempts by others to defend his actions as just business as usual in our polarized climate should transcend party,” the judge said of Mr. Stone. “The dismay and disgust at any attempt to interfere with the efforts of prosecutors and members of the judiciary to fulfill their duty should transcend party.”

The case was thrown into disarray last week when Attorney General William P. Barr overruled a sentencing recommendation by four career prosecutors, who then quit the case in protest. Mr. Barr said he decided on his own that the prosecutors’ request for a prison term of seven to nine years was too harsh. But his move coincided with Mr. Trump’s public complaints about the prosecutors’ recommendation and elicited widespread criticism that he had bent to the president’s will.

The attorney general, facing a backlash within the department, asked Mr. Trump in a nationally televised interview to cease his running commentary about the department’s criminal cases.

Yet less than three hours after Mr. Stone was sentenced, the president declared he should be “exonerated,” echoing the defense team’s arguments in detail. Speaking in Las Vegas, he said Mr. Stone was the victim of “a bad jury” led by an anti-Trump activist And he suggested that he would use his clemency power to spare Mr. Stone if Judge Jackson did not agree to a new trial sought by defense lawyers.

A jury in November convicted Mr. Stone of seven felony charges, including lying under oath to a congressional committee and threatening a witness whose testimony would have exposed those lies. In biting tones, Judge Jackson dismissed any notion that the case lacked merit.

She said that Mr. Stone hindered a congressional inquiry of national importance because the truth would have embarrassed the president and his 2016 campaign. The documentary evidence alone, she said, proved that Mr. Stone deceived the House Intelligence Committee about his efforts to obtain information from WikiLeaks about Democratic emails that had been stolen by Russian operatives who sought to influence the 2016 presidential election.

“He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president,” the judge said. In government inquiries, she added, “the truth still exists. The truth still matters.” Otherwise, she said, “everyone loses.”

Judge Jackson took special umbrage at the defense team’s argument that Mr. Stone’s deception was of no real consequence. “Sure, defense is free to say, ‘Who cares?’” she said. “But I will say this: Congress cared.” So, too, she said, did the Justice Department and U.S. attorney’s office, which brought the case, and the jurors who heard the evidence.

“The American people cared. And I care,” she declared.

In his remarks in Las Vegas, Mr. Trump made clear he was not satisfied with the outcome of the case.

“I’m not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed on a president of the United States,” he said. “I want the process to play out. I think that’s the best thing to do because I’d love to see Roger exonerated — and I’d love to see it happen — because personally I think he was treated unfairly. ”

He said he would wait to see how the case was ultimately resolved.

“We will watch the process and watch it very closely,” the president added. “And at some point, I will make a determination. But Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process, OK?”

Judge Jackson, who spent six years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington that handled the case, interrogated the prosecutor who replaced the four who quit over the change in sentencing recommendation ordered by Mr. Barr. In a second sentencing recommendation, prosecutors said “far less” of a prison term than seven to nine years was warranted, but left the length of incarceration up to the judge.

Why, she asked, had the prosecutors scrapped Justice Department policy — as well as the usual practice of the office — and sought a more lenient punishment than advisory sentencing guidelines suggested?

“As I understand it, you are representing the United States of America,” she told John Crabb Jr., an assistant United States attorney, with a trace of sarcasm. “I fear you know less about the case, saw less of the testimony and exhibits than just about every other person in this courtroom.”

“Is there anything you would like to say about why you are the one standing here?” she asked.

Clearly uncomfortable, Mr. Crabb apologized to the judge for “the confusion the government has caused.” He went out of his way to compliment her, saying the Justice Department trusted her to decide because of her expertise in such cases and “this court’s record of thoughtful analysis and fair sentences.”

Mr. Crabb defended the prosecution as a “righteous” effort to hold Mr. Stone to account for “serious” crimes. And he said the prosecutors who resigned from the case were not to blame for the confusion, instead blaming “a miscommunication” between Mr. Barr and Timothy Shea, the newly appointed United States attorney for the District of Columbia.

“The Department of Justice and the United States attorney’s office is committed to enforcing the law without fear, favor or political influence,” he said.

But Mr. Crabb raised yet more questions by simultaneously defending the argument for a stiff sentence laid out in the office’s first sentencing memo without disavowing the second sentencing memo that argued for a lighter punishment.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss internal deliberations,” he said when the judge pressed him for details. “I apologize.”

Judge Jackson said she agreed with the Justice Department’s second memo that the sentencing guidelines were too harsh. But she said she wondered if the government would adopt that same stance in future cases or whether it was reserved only for Mr. Stone.

The Stone case was one of the last prosecutions arising from the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race. Despite the controversy surrounding it, Judge Jackson said repeatedly on Thursday that she was treating the case like any ordinary prosecution.

She said she took into account that Mr. Stone is 67 and had no criminal record. Working against Mr. Stone, she said, was his “belligerence” and “incendiary” conduct after he was indicted. On social media, Mr. Stone posted a photograph of the judge with the image of a cross hairs near her head.

In response, Judge Jackson imposed a strict gag order on Mr. Stone, but she said he violated it even during trial when he appeared to ask the president, through a proxy, for a pardon. Flouting court orders and threatening the security of court personnel “is intolerable to the administration of justice,” she declared.

Much of the debate over Mr. Stone’s sentence revolved around whether he merely tried to influence a witness not to cooperate or issued a threat of violence, which under the sentencing guidelines would prompt a far more substantial penalty.

Initially, the prosecutors asserted that Mr. Stone’s threat of bodily harm justified a stiffer sentence. So, too, did the fact that he prevented congressional investigators from discovering the truth and carried out an extensive scheme over many months to frustrate them, they said.

Then they appeared to back off, noting that the witness, a New York radio host named Randy Credico, had written a letter to the judge saying he never feared that Mr. Stone himself would actually harm him.

Seth Ginsberg, Mr. Stone’s defense lawyer, said that Mr. Stone was simply engaging in his usual banter. “Mr. Stone is know for using rough, hyperbolic language,” he said. “There was no threat at all.”

Judge Jackson said Mr. Credico was an “extremely nervous” witness whose accounts had varied over time. She noted that he had testified to a grand jury that he had left his home and was wearing a disguise because he feared he would be in danger if Mr. Stone identified him as “a rat.”

During the trial, Mr. Credico said that he feared Mr. Stone, a well-known political commentator, would create havoc in his life and that of a close friend’s if he testified before the House committee. He ultimately took the Fifth Amendment.

The judge said she could not simply overlook Mr. Stone’s texts to Mr. Credico, including one that read, “Prepare to die.”

While Mr. Stone clearly enjoyed “adolescent mind games,” she said, “nothing about this case was a joke. It wasn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a prank.”

Zach Montague contributed reporting.

Sharon LaFraniere is an investigative reporter. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on Donald Trump’s connections with Russia. More about Sharon LaFraniere

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Adviser Sentenced to 40 Months. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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