Roger Stone trial set to begin (Update: Stone found guilty on all 7 counts)(Update: Trump commutes sentence) (1 Viewer)

[superchuck500]

Jury selection will begin Tuesday morning. Note that Steve Bannon intends to testify for the prosecution.

Roger Stone will go on trial starting Nov. 5 in Washington, the federal judge presiding over the high-profile case said Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson set out a calendar for a two-week trial that will pit the longtime Trump associate against special counsel Robert Mueller on charges Stone lied to Congress and obstructed lawmakers’ Russia investigations.

Stone entered the D.C. courthouse for Thursday’s status hearing uncertain whether he’d face any penalties — including jail — for violating the terms of a gag order restricting his ability to talk about any aspect of the case.

But Stone was spared any punishment after Jackson opened the proceedings saying she didn’t “intend to dwell” on the dispute, which centers on discrepancies over whether Stone mislead the court about plans to rerelease a recent book with a new introduction bashing Mueller’s investigation.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/14/roger-stone-trial-1221289


https://www.law.com/nationallawjour...n-roger-stones-trial/?slreturn=20190931143946

 

[coldseat]

Or he's ready to quit because he only wanted the job in the first place to shirt on the Mueller report - as he outlined in his giant memo that got him the job - and doesn't want to totally ruin his reputation by helping Trump ruin the DOJ.

Too late for that, dude's reputation will never recover. Of course that means he'll have a very profitable career with Fox News or some other conservative outlet.

 

[SaintForLife]

It's highly misleading to imply that the Trump-Russia contacts uncovered by Mueller and others were mostly routine business contacts that were just incidental to Trump doing business in Russia. They weren't. Stone's case is a good example -- Stone reached out to Wikileaks and Guccifer because he believed they had information which could harm Hillary and help Trump, not because he or Trump generally had prior Russian business contacts. Same for the Trump Tower meeting, the Grand Havana meeting, Flynn-Kislyak, etc. These were all specific to Trump's candidacy.

Putin hating Hillary does not exclude him also wanting Trump to win for other reasons. But whatever Putin's motivation for influencing the election in Trump's favor, the point in my post about Stone was that Trump's people knew about Russia wanting to help, and welcomed that help. Stone's behavior tends to confirm the accuracy of that conclusion.



This is a loaded question. Trump claims not to have been involved despite having regular conversations with Stone at a time when Stone was privately obsessed with getting to Assange and Trump was publicly obsessing over Wikileaks releases. Stone's conviction may pressure him to give more information about what Trump knows. That's likely why Trump wants to pardon him.

Also, the answer to the loaded question is: a political candidate with ethics. It was not normal for Trump to publicly encourage Russia to hack Hillary's emails while he was secretly negotiating a massive business deal in Russia, lying to the public about it, and directing his lawyer to lie about it. They should have told the FBI what the Russians were doing, but they didn't because they're unethical people. You said yourself plenty of them were shady and corrupt -- this was shady and corrupt.



I don't know how you can possibly say this after the Stone conviction. But again, Wikileaks is a small part of what the investigation uncovered.



Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks.



Nearly all of the things we're discussing in this post are things we didn't know about before the Mueller investigation. Without the investigation, Trump would still be out there saying Russia didn't interfere, and didn't want to help him win. We wouldn't know his campaign manager was acting as an agent for pro-Russian interests. We wouldn't know that most of his national security team was secretly in contact with Russians and trying to negotiate the removal of sanctions during the transition. We wouldn't know Stone was trying to coordinate with Wikileaks. We wouldn't know Trump was secretly negotiating on several hundred million dollar deals with Russia while lying about it.

We still don't know the whole story because guys like Stone and Manafort are staying tight-lipped, and because much of what Mueller was doing has spun off into other ongoing investigations. You're moving the goalposts when you say Trump's people "weren't involved with hacked emails." This thread is partially about Trump desperately wanting to pardon someone who was convicted of lying about trying to obtain hacked emails. So no, Trump's people weren't the hackers, but they did plenty of under-the-table dealings with Russia trying to get them and/or give Russia things it wanted. The national security concerns in the Mueller report extend far beyond the Wikileaks / pre-election hacking conspiracy angle. If the Russia case were flimsy, Trump's people wouldn't still be going to prison for it.

Maybe I missed it, but can you point out how the Stone trial and conviction shows what you are claiming. From what I remember, Stone didn't have any contacts with Wikileaks except when Wikileaks messenged him on Twitter to tell him to stop claiming they were in communication. The prosecutors didn't charge Stone or produce any evidence for the Mueller/Democrat theory that Stone was working with Wikileaks in regards to the hacked emails. I know the indictment of Stone alleged that he did, but they didn't charge him or produce any evidence to show that was the case.

The FBI and Mueller initially suspected Trump campaign officials conspired with Wikileaks and Russia, but all they found was Stone lied about his conversations about Wikileaks. I know the New York Times said Stone had no contact with Wikileaks and Isikoff said the same and said Stone with a huckster conning hucksters.

The Russia case is flimsy and those people are going to jail for lying to investigators and not for anything to do with Russia election conspiracy.

 

[Beach Friends]

Too late for that, dude's reputation will never recover. Of course that means he'll have a very profitable career with Fox News or some other conservative outlet.

Meh, his reputation is fine except with that certain crowd. You know, the ones who believed Jussie really was the gay Tupac, Avenatti was going to be President, and the Covington kid was guilty of a face crime. Same ones fall for the hoaxes again and again.

 

[SaintForLife]

"Roger Stone's prosecution is illegitimate because the underlying behavior he's being prosecuted for was already proven not to have happened." That's an interesting way to frame it. Stone -- while being interviewed by Congress in an investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference -- lied repeatedly about his efforts to reach Russian cutouts who were pushing hacked DNC emails. He was convicted of 5 separate counts of lying, obstructing the investigation, and intimidating a witness with threats, and threatened a federal judge. He arrogantly flouted our justice system, and will likely pay a price for it.

My initial post was simply providing background on why Trump and Barr were likely trying to interfere with Stone's sentencing -- which I think is because Stone has damaging information they don't want him disclosing to prosecutors to get his sentence reduced. As I acknowledged, I could be wrong about that, but I provided plenty of reasons why I think that. The circular logic in that article does nothing to address Trump's interest in Stone's case.



Flynn's and Papadopoulos' lies are unrelated to the Stone topic, and merit their own discussions in a separate thread because the claims in that article are preposterous. But the short version: their lies were not trivial, and were designed to cover up what they were doing. Flynn sold US foreign policy for cash. Papadopoulos' lies hindered the investigation. Their lies related to contacts with Russia, a foreign enemy attacking our elections (plus Flynn's lies about secretly lobbying for Turkey for $530k while getting top secret US intel briefings). Mueller addresses their lies briefly beginning on p. 192 of his report, but there's much more to both of the stories than he discussed.

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

The Special Cousel knew their was no Russia Trump conspiracy, but they continued to go after Stone. Why do you think that happened? Stone deserves to go to jail for his lying and obstruction, but why did Mueller keep going after Stone after they knew their was no Trump Russia conspiracy?

Your post totally ignores how the prosecutors used the questionable enhancement to increase the recommended sentencing guidelines. I'm sure you are well aware that the sentencing guidelines are non-binding right? The judge always makes the call on sentencing so the hyperbolic proclamations and the astroturfing by the group of prosecutors rings hollow. Your theory about the sentencing guidelines is far fetched in my opinion.

 

[coldseat]

Meh, his reputation is fine except with that certain crowd. You know, the ones who believed Jussie really was the gay Tupac, Avenatti was going to be President, and the Covington kid was guilty of a face crime. Same ones fall for the hoaxes again and again.

We really need to find a portal for all of you Trump guys to walk through, that way you can finally live in the alternate reality you so desperately want. Lie to yourself all you want, just stop dragging the rest of the country down with you.

 

[SaintForLife]

We really need to find a portal for all of you Trump guys to walk through, that way you can finally live in the alternate reality you so desperately want. Lie to yourself all you want, just stop dragging the rest of the country down with you.

I hope you are preparing for more disappointment in November.

 

[samiam5211]

The Special Cousel knew their was no Russia Trump conspiracy, but they continued to go after Stone. Why do you think that happened? Stone deserves to go to jail for his lying and obstruction, but why did Mueller keep going after Stone after they knew their was no Trump Russia conspiracy?

Your post totally ignores how the prosecutors used the questionable enhancement to increase the recommended sentencing guidelines. I'm sure you are well aware that the sentencing guidelines are non-binding right? The judge always makes the call on sentencing so the hyperbolic proclamations and the astroturfing by the group of prosecutors rings hollow. Your theory about the sentencing guidelines is far fetched in my opinion.

I don't know why you think Mueller knew there was no Russia/Trump conspiracy.

To this day he has NEVER said that, so i'm not sure why you claim that he already knew during the investigation.

 

[FullMonte]

The Special Cousel knew their was no Russia Trump conspiracy, but they continued to go after Stone. Why do you think that happened? Stone deserves to go to jail for his lying and obstruction, but why did Mueller keep going after Stone after they knew their was no Trump Russia conspiracy?

So, he deserved to go to jail for lying to congress, but the guy leading the investigation shouldn't have continued to prosecute him? How does that work? Mueller stops prosecuting Stone, and he simply walks over to a nearby jail and locks himself up?

 

[MT15]

Yeah, that was sure a perplexing statement. SFL, when the FBI encounters lying and obstruction of an investigation do you imagine they just give up?

Why do you think all these Trump cronies lied to investigators, over and over and over again? Why would a person do that, knowing they are innocent of all wrongdoing?

Roger Stone indirectly threatened the judge of his case during the trial, he directly threatened to kill a witness and steal his dog before that. You don’t get to do that and then later have prosecutors say, oh well, it wasn’t a serious threat. You have to take threats at face value.

Just admit, Stone’s sentencing memo was by the book and within the sentencing guidelines. It was changed by Barr because Stone is buddies with Trump. Those are objectively true. You are reading people’s opinions who are far outside the norm and giving you an extremely slanted view of everything.

 

[TaylorB]

Maybe I missed it, but can you point out how the Stone trial and conviction shows what you are claiming. From what I remember, Stone didn't have any contacts with Wikileaks except when Wikileaks messenged him on Twitter to tell him to stop claiming they were in communication. The prosecutors didn't charge Stone or produce any evidence for the Mueller/Democrat theory that Stone was working with Wikileaks in regards to the hacked emails. I know the indictment of Stone alleged that he did, but they didn't charge him or produce any evidence to show that was the case.

The FBI and Mueller initially suspected Trump campaign officials conspired with Wikileaks and Russia, but all they found was Stone lied about his conversations about Wikileaks. I know the New York Times said Stone had no contact with Wikileaks and Isikoff said the same and said Stone with a huckster conning hucksters.

The Russia case is flimsy and those people are going to jail for lying to investigators and not for anything to do with Russia election conspiracy.

All I can tell you at this point is to read the legal documents connected to these cases. The fact that you’re still unable to connect Stone and WikiLeaks either means you’re getting bad information, or you’re being deliberately obtuse about it. I know you love that one sentence from a New York Times article that you think exonerates everyone. I promise you will find more context for Stone and WikiLeaks in legal documents than from right wing twitter accounts re-posting a sentence from an outlet they call fake news the 99.9% of the time they don’t like what it says.

Read the indictment. It tells the story about what Stone did, then at the end it describes how the things he did amounted to 7 different federal crimes (pro-tip: Organization 1 = WikiLeaks). He got convicted of all the crimes described in the indictment. So the indictment is a good source if you really want to know what he did. The sentencing memos tell the story as well.

Although you keep repeating the false claim that none of the many convictions were relevant to the Trump Russia case (that’s not exactly what you’ve said, but that appears to be what you want people to take from it), at least if you’re saying they went to jail for lying, then we can get past the ridiculous talking points in that article suggesting Flynn didn’t lie?

The Special Cousel knew their was no Russia Trump conspiracy, but they continued to go after Stone. Why do you think that happened? Stone deserves to go to jail for his lying and obstruction, but why did Mueller keep going after Stone after they knew their was no Trump Russia conspiracy?

Your premise that Mueller “knew there was no Russia Trump conspiracy” is false. Before you go back and try to quote a post of mine from last week as proof that I’m contradicting myself, read it closely, because I think from your subsequent posts that you read my comment more broadly than what I was saying. Mueller hadn’t established a very specific type of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt at the time he issued his report. There were lots of ongoing investigations when they closed up shop. Just as one limited example, read the Mueller report starting on p. 51 about the campaign and WikiLeaks, and look how much is redacted for tens of pages after that due to potential harm to ongoing matters. This is because there are still people being investigated, charged, and will potentially be cooperating and providing more information.

The short answer, therefore, is that Mueller was still going after Stone because (1) the investigation into what happened in 2016 and matters relating to it was, and still is, ongoing, and (2) the American justice system doesn’t work if people can show that kind of contempt for it without paying a price.

Your post totally ignores how the prosecutors used the questionable enhancement to increase the recommended sentencing guidelines. I'm sure you are well aware that the sentencing guidelines are non-binding right? The judge always makes the call on sentencing so the hyperbolic proclamations and the astroturfing by the group of prosecutors rings hollow. Your theory about the sentencing guidelines is far fetched in my opinion.

As I recall, the only thing I said about the guidelines is that Stone wasn’t charged separately for threatening Judge Jackson while he was awaiting trial, and instead it was treated as a 2 level enhancement. What that means is that instead of having the jury also render a verdict on that as an 8th crime, it can be considered in adding to his sentence. If he wins a motion for new trial there‘s a good chance that charge is tacked on as a new offense, which exposes him to more prison time if convicted (6 years, I think) than if it’s treated as an enhancement (6 months, or whatever the link in my post says). I offered no theory on the appropriateness of the recommendation overall, or what the judge will do with it, as that’s way above my pay grade.

You’re attacking arguments I didn’t make. Yes I know the guidelines are non-binding and up to the judge. If your point about the guidelines is that the judge should render a fair verdict based upon a consistent application of the guidelines notwithstanding the parties’ arguments, I’m fine with that. If you’re implying the hefty recommendation by the prosecution somehow excuses Trump weighing in, I’m not fine with that. If you think Trump weighing in has nothing to do with his legal exposure, I think you‘ll be proven wrong sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

 

[Saintamaniac]

All I can tell you at this point is to read the legal documents connected to these cases. The fact that you’re still unable to connect Stone and WikiLeaks either means you’re getting bad information, or you’re being deliberately obtuse about it. I know you love that one sentence from a New York Times article that you think exonerates everyone. I promise you will find more context for Stone and WikiLeaks in legal documents than from right wing twitter accounts re-posting a sentence from an outlet they call fake news the 99.9% of the time they don’t like what it says.

Read the indictment. It tells the story about what Stone did, then at the end it describes how the things he did amounted to 7 different federal crimes (pro-tip: Organization 1 = WikiLeaks). He got convicted of all the crimes described in the indictment. So the indictment is a good source if you really want to know what he did. The sentencing memos tell the story as well.

Although you keep repeating the false claim that none of the many convictions were relevant to the Trump Russia case (that’s not exactly what you’ve said, but that appears to be what you want people to take from it), at least if you’re saying they went to jail for lying, then we can get past the ridiculous talking points in that article suggesting Flynn didn’t lie?



Your premise that Mueller “knew there was no Russia Trump conspiracy” is false. Before you go back and try to quote a post of mine from last week as proof that I’m contradicting myself, read it closely, because I think from your subsequent posts that you read my comment more broadly than what I was saying. Mueller hadn’t established a very specific type of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt at the time he issued his report. There were lots of ongoing investigations when they closed up shop. Just as one limited example, read the Mueller report starting on p. 51 about the campaign and WikiLeaks, and look how much is redacted for tens of pages after that due to potential harm to ongoing matters. This is because there are still people being investigated, charged, and will potentially be cooperating and providing more information.

The short answer, therefore, is that Mueller was still going after Stone because (1) the investigation into what happened in 2016 and matters relating to it was, and still is, ongoing, and (2) the American justice system doesn’t work if people can show that kind of contempt for it without paying a price.



As I recall, the only thing I said about the guidelines is that Stone wasn’t charged separately for threatening Judge Jackson while he was awaiting trial, and instead it was treated as a 2 level enhancement. What that means is that instead of having the jury also render a verdict on that as an 8th crime, it can be considered in adding to his sentence. If he wins a motion for new trial there‘s a good chance that charge is tacked on as a new offense, which exposes him to more prison time if convicted (6 years, I think) than if it’s treated as an enhancement (6 months, or whatever the link in my post says). I offered no theory on the appropriateness of the recommendation overall, or what the judge will do with it, as that’s way above my pay grade.

You’re attacking arguments I didn’t make. Yes I know the guidelines are non-binding and up to the judge. If your point about the guidelines is that the judge should render a fair verdict based upon a consistent application of the guidelines notwithstanding the parties’ arguments, I’m fine with that. If you’re implying the hefty recommendation by the prosecution somehow excuses Trump weighing in, I’m not fine with that. If you think Trump weighing in has nothing to do with his legal exposure, I think you‘ll be proven wrong sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

A valiant effort on your part but alas, you will have more success convincing a 4 year old that Santa Claus isn't real.

 

[Heathen]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...y-of-new-national-polls-sanders-led-them-all/

 

[superchuck500]

So Judge Jackson is apparently giving both sides (DOJ and Stone) some grief about various aspects of the sentencing issues. She's going through the sentencing guidelines and factors. It seems like the sentence is going to be significant but not where the government originally proposed. Still waiting for the actual sentence.

 

[superchuck500]

Interesting. The new DOJ team seems to favor a significant sentence.

 

[insidejob]

40 months and a $20K fine.

ETA: Apparently, people who are convicted of obstruction with no criminal record usually get about ten months, so this is a "harsh" sentence.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

40 months and a $20K fine.

ETA: Apparently, people who are convicted of obstruction with no criminal record usually get about ten months, so this is a "harsh" sentence.

He'll probably never spend a day inside a jail cell.

 

[JimEverett]

Really makes the original sentencing recommendation by prosecutors look unreasonable. 40 months is a lot for what he was convicted of, no doubt its that high because of threats to a witness - a witness who said he didn't feel threatened.

 

[SaintForLife]

Really makes the original sentencing recommendation by prosecutors look unreasonable. 40 months is a lot for what he was convicted of, no doubt its that high because of threats to a witness - a witness who said he didn't feel threatened.