By Roger Stone
The Department of Justice has just released a report from the Inspector Generals office which confirms that there was no political pressure exerted on the DOJ prosecutor’s working on my case to reduce their sentencing recommendation.
The report states, “Our investigation did not identify documentary or testimonial evidence that the actions and decisions of those involved in the preparation and filing of the first and second sentencing memorandum were affected by improper political consideration of influence.”
Following my politically based show-trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia issued the government’s sentencing memorandum, recommending that the U.S. District Judge impose a sentence range of 87 to 108 months of incarceration, but the Interim District of Columbia U.S. Attorney, realized that the sentencing recommendation was much higher than what he was told it would be, so he requested a review, and then a second recommendation was issued, with a lower sentencing score.
The main issue between the discrepancies in the two sentencing recommendations was over an 8 point increase in the severity level of my case because I told Randy Credico I would take his dog from him after he began changing his story, as an angry joke between old friends. Credico wrote to the judge that he never thought I was actually serious and that he never felt threatened, but the partisan prosecutors used that joke to try to double my sentence by inferring that I threatened a witness.
When the US Attorney issued a second sentencing memorandum with a lower recommendation, 4 of the prosecutors who were handling my case resigned, to show their solidarity with the democrats and to try to demonstrate to the public that they thought my sentence recommendation was too low.
A member of the government’s trial team, Prosecutor #2, falsely testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that improper considerations influenced the Department’s handling of my sentencing recommendation. During his Judiciary Committee testimony, Prosecutor 2 identified three supervisors in the Department of Justice as having made the following statements or been involved in the relevant discussions.
- Stone was “being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President.”
- Interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea was “receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break.”
- The Interim U.S. Attorney was “giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was afraid of the President.”
But those conversations never happened. All three supervisors, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chief of the Criminal Division, and the Fraud and Public Corruption Section Chief, went to the Office of Professional Responsibility to file a complaint against Prosecutor 2 for making statements that were “false and frivolous.”
Since Prosecutor 2 made those false statements during testimony to Congress, the Inspector General’s office opened an investigation to see if he would be criminally charged for lying to Congress – the same charge that Prosecutor 2 had charged me with. Some people would consider that to be poetic justice, or Karma.
Since the Inspector Generals Office has jurisdiction over all criminal allegations against DOJ employees, including attorneys, they opened an investigation into Prosecutor 2’s false, and potentially criminal testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and they also opened a parallel examination of the circumstances surrounding the handling of my sentencing recommendation to see if anyone placed improper political pressure on the trial team.
The investigation included a review of documents, emails, phone records, text messages and an analysis of relevant laws, regulations, DOJ policies, and USSG provisions. They also conducted interviews of 24 current and former Department attorneys and officials, three of the four members of the trial team—Prosecutor 1, Prosecutor 2, and Prosecutor 3—as well as the D.C. U.S. Attorney and his staff.
On Wednesday they released their final report.
It said that nobody placed improper political pressure on the trial team to lesson my sentencing recommendations.
The report also concluded that there was not enough evidence to prosecute prosecutor #2 for lying to Congress, since some of the people prosecuting my case might have openly discussed the possibility that the White House could try to interfere – which the Inspector General report emphatically says did not happen. The report stated, “Although we did not find evidence sufficient to establish improper political considerations or influence, as Prosecutor 2 had alleged in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, we identified statements made by Prosecutor 1 and speculative comments by the FPC Chief that influenced Prosecutor 2’s suspicions about possible political interference and formed a substantial basis for Prosecutor 2’s testimony.”
Prosecutor 2 wanted to believe that Attorney General Barr put pressure on Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, to lesson my sentencing recommendation, so the democrats could use this information to tarnish Trumps reputation, but after the testimony from all of the witnesses was heard it was clear that there was no interference. It was Shea’s inexperience that contributed to a second sentencing memorandum being submitted to the court. The Inspector Generals report stated – “Shea described the sentencing range as ‘surprisingly high’ and also stated that ‘he didn’t like the rhetoric’ in the factual summary portion of the sentencing memorandum. He said the recommendation did not seem proportional to the sentences imposed in comparable cases and instead appeared ‘out of whack.’ Shea said that he prosecuted several perjury cases when he was an AUSA and had never seen those cases produce a sentence that high, and that he was aware of many violent crimes that did not result in sentences ‘anywhere near’ the sentence the team was recommending.” His confusion, or lack of oversight, allowed partisan prosecutors to initially recommend a sentence that was so unjust that the U.S. Atorney had to revise their recommendations after he realized that the prosecutors formal recommendations were much higher than what they had discussed with him previously.
The Inspector Generals report stated, “We also concluded that Shea’s failures in leadership prompted the events leading up to the filing of the second sentencing memorandum.”
Reuters, one of the largest news agencies in the world, deliberately misrepresented the reports conclusions by using a headline for their story that reads – “Roger Stone: Top Trump Justice officials intervened to cut sentence, watchdog finds.”
That heading is completely contrary to the true findings of the official report – which highlights how poorly the media portrays the people who are trying to Make America Great Again.
The conclusion of the report states – “We found no evidence that DOJ leadership, Shea, or DC USAO supervisors engaged in misconduct or violated Department policy in connection with the Stone sentencing.” Reuters is Wrong.
