Roger Stone, a longtime associate to Donald Trump and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster”, has found himself back in the news after the president criticised prosecutors for recommending he receive a seven-to-nine year prison sentence.
The Justice Department took the rare step of signalling it would seek a more lenient sentence for Stone following Mr Trump’s comments on the case, in which he described the recommendation as unduly harsh.
“This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” Mr Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Stone was convicted in November over seven crimes, including lying to Congress and witness tampering during former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He became the sixth former aide to Mr Trump to face a conviction in cases resulting from the federal probe.
The 24-page indictment charged Stone with one count each of witness tampering and obstruction, as well as five counts of providing false statements. The filings also accused him of acting as a conduit between the president’s 2016 campaign and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the lead up to the election.
The false statements all largely surrounded Stone’s communications to associates about Wikileaks, which released stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. He also was accused of tampering with witness Randy Credico, a radio host who Stone seemed to threaten in text messages as he was preparing to deliver evidence to the House Intelligence Committee.
The former special counsel said in its indictment of Stone that he deliberately obstructed multiple probes, including investigations into Russian interference led by the FBI, House and Senate intelligence committees.
All four of the front-line prosecutors who worked on the case resigned, apparently in protest, shortly after the Justice Department announced its intention to seek a lighter sentence.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has not left out the possibility of pardoning his longtime friend.
The president responded to reporters at the White House on Wednesday asking if he had considered issuing a pardon, saying: “I don’t want to say that yet.”
The sentencing has been set for 20 February. It remains unclear whether Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has presided over the case, would accept new recommendations from the Justice Department or provide a lengthier sentence for Stone.
Mr Trump has continued to slam the judicial process and recommended sentencing for Stone, saying on Wednesday: “You have murderers and drug addicts, they don’t get nine years. Nine years for doing something that nobody can even define what he did?”
The president also suggested the prosecutors “ought to apologise to a lot of people whose lives they’ve ruined”.
The White House has since claimed Mr Trump did not speak with the Justice Department before it stepped in to seek a lighter sentencing.
“Look, he’s the chief law enforcement officer. He has the right to do it. He just didn’t,” White House principal Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told Fox News. “He didn’t make any comment — didn’t have a conversation, I should say, rather, with the attorney general, and that’s just ludicrous. It’s just another scandal that the Democrats are trying to push forward.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has requested the Justice Department’s Inspector General office investigate the decision to intervene in the prosecutorial decision.
Mr Trump interfering in the case has caused a swift backlash on Capitol Hill, with presidential hopeful and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren saying in a statement: “Americans of all political stripes should be gravely concerned about the corruption that pressures federal prosecutors to give sweetheart deals to criminals who do their crimes on behalf of Donald Trump.”
She added: “Yes Roger Stone, I’m looking at you.”
