Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/20/roger-stone-sentenced-to-40-mo.html
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If we had never know the recommendation of 7-9, I’d have looked at 3.5 years and said…good. He deserves jail time and anything is better than nothing. But knowing that the prosecution wanted 7-9 makes this utter bullshit because its not enough.
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Stone will finally get his unsaid wish of becoming a martyr and serving a non-trivial amount of jail time. Good.
(At least until Trump pardons him.)
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Legal experts like Ken White had suggested he was unlikely to actually get the 7-9 years in any case since judges aren’t actually beholden to the sentencing guidelines.
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True…but it sets MY expectations. Which I presume is why it got put out there as the 4 prosecutors resigned.
My opinion was swayed 
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Soooo, Bill Barr proved himself again to be a horse’s ass partisan hack while arguing that the sentence that Judge Jackson was going to hand down anyway was, in fact, totally legit?
That’s something, I suppose.
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I suppose that I should have understood the calling off of the judges association meeting should have been a sign of Stone getting time.
Yes let’s see at what speed a pardon travels from a Padron.
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So, how much would be expected if he was poor and stole a cartoon of cigarettes, vs rich, well connected, and guilty of trying to subvert democracy and intimidating a judge?
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I’m generally a little suspect of a prosecutor’s recommendations. Having just committed a significant amount of time to proving someone guilty, I think it would be natural for them to be inclined to want a long sentence, perhaps longer than is necessary or appropriate.
However, the fact that four prosecutors resigned suggests to me that this isn’t just a matter of an unconscious bias towards a longer term. You don’t leave a job like that just because the judge’s ruling didn’t suit your preference. Four legal experts genuinely saw this as a miscarriage of justice.
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Sounds like the judge was setting this up to make it harder for Trump to pardon. Trump will have a hard time characterizing this as an excessive sentence.
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Maybe he’d settle for a swift kick in his ass, or to think of it, why not both?
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Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months (3 years + 4 months) in prison
Um, yeah… so?
Yep. Also, and let’s not forget: Pardons are for Federal crimes, not state – NY or FL could follow the rat’s nest of money even further down and post their own, unpardonable charges …
At the same time, I read a piece that suggested Trump loooooves pardons because they make him feel like the King he is in his mind – no Congress, no courts, just his big dumb signature and DONE. And, of course, he can’t shut up about it either.
And finally, this sentence is way too light – way too light – and the way Trump put his fat thumb on the scale is a) disgusting and b) Something worthy of derision.
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It’s also a really sledge-hammer-dumb way to build the kind of transactional loyalty that is Trump’s only currency. You almost wonder if he wants people he finds useful to be thrown in jail, just so he has something on them with a pardon.
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The real question is whether Trump has the patience to wait an entire week before pardoning him…
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I would argue that that is not even a crime.
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This seems very timely and relevant again, but especially given Stone’s Nixon tat:
This time around, we no longer have GSH with us – might as well wash it down with this:
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I’m genuinely disappointed by Judge Jackson on this one. She had a chance to push back against the administration and its manipulation of the judiciary on this one, and shit the bed.
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