One Count Of Obstruction Of An Official Proceeding; Five Counts Of False Statements Including Lying To Congress
KING: Back to our breaking news this hour, a federal judge in the process of sentencing Roger Stone, the long-time Trump Associate and ally for his convictions as part of the Mueller investigation. As she sentences Stone and goes through the counts, the Federal Judge, Amy Berman Jackson, is giving Mr. Stone a tongue lashing. Let's go live outside the court house to CNN's Sara Murray. Sara, the judge going through those counts and essentially calling Roger Stone insecure, saying he craves attention and saying this is all his fault don't blame politics and don't blame her.</s>MURRAY: Yes, basically. She's also laying out the various crimes. When she was talking about him lying to Congress, she said, this is not some secret Anti-Trump, but to Congress she noted that the panel was being headed by a Republican Devin Nunes at the time and yes she is not very fond of the way Trump has conducted himself during this trial about Roger Stone's character.</s>MURRAY: She says at his core Mr. Stone is an insecure person who craves and recklessly pursues attention. Nothing about this case was a joke, it wasn't funny. She is now walking through how she views the two Justice Department sentencing memos, the original one and the revised memo. She has agreed with various parts of both of them. She has only said probation wouldn't be sufficient. So we're still waiting to see what the sentence is she's going to hand down. But she's making a very clear in these remarks that she doesn't feel like Roger Stone has taken this case or his prosecution very seriously. She views his crimes very seriously and I think what you've seen more broadly in this courtroom is the Judge and even the new prosecutors on this case trying to set the record straight, trying to protect the judicial system, trying to lay out that it is not okay to obstruct justice, it is not okay to tamper with witnesses. The big question now is you know what sentence the Judge is ultimately going to land on?</s>KING: And we should get that momentarily. Sara Murray will come back to us when we get color or the sentencing details from the courtroom. Shan, I just want to get your prospective on this in the sense that the original Justice Department memo which a lot of people thought a bit on the harsh side 7 to 9 years. Main justice intervenes then which is an extraordinary especially because the President himself was tweeting, let's do something about this, I think this is an outrage. In the case of Paul Manafort the sentencing guidelines - she could have sentenced him for up to ten years she gave him 3.5 years. What is her history and just put the case in all the politics surrounded it in the context of what do you think she is going to come down here?</s>WU: Well, it is a quite colored defendant not a violent crime. He does not have a history of this. He is an older person. A big help to him is that Randy Credico the victim of the obstruction wrote certain ambiguous letter saying he didn't feel personally that threatened by it. But the fact is he did make that attempt to obstruct justice. I thought the 7 to 9 years was highly unrealistic. I mean, I get the prosecutors want a heavier sentence when you've tried defendant and convicted him and he is very unrepentant, but I thought all along she is going to be more in the two to three range.</s>COLLINS: So one interesting thing she just said about that letter from Credico saying it says more about him than it does about Stone, and that he just really probably in her opinion didn't want to be seen as the reason behind this sentencing today. But she did say something else interesting, she just said you know it wasn't obstructing to some secret Anti-Trump group, it was to Congress, members of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, and she pointed out that the committee that the lied to was at that time headed by a Republican and an ally of the President, Devin Nunes. So I think she is trying to go ahead and combat what we're going to be hearing from the President's allies depending on how this all ends up.</s>KING: And to that point, Shimon, she seems to be she's addressing Roger Stone but she seems to be addressing the President as well in all the arguments he has made it about a deep state, about a flawed process. She's defending the integrity of the Mueller investigation she is defending the integrity of the rights of Congress to ask people questions. She's essentially saying, Roger Stone, your excuses do not fly here, and Roger Stone's excuses are the President's excuses.</s>PROKUPECZ: She is essentially - she's standing up for the Department of Justice and she's standing up for justice. This is her moment to stand up to all the attacks from the President in this entire investigation towards the Justice Department, to its judges. That is the whole point of this in the end. There is a larger motivation here without a doubt. There's been a larger motivation here throughout this entire trial, throughout these entire proceedings. And the fear is that people aren't going to take this seriously. You know, she is in court right now and she's standing up for the Department of Justice, for the prosecutors who filed that initial sentencing memorandum, saying that it was professionally handled, that it was thorough. And any suggestion that the prosecutors did anything improper or unethical is incorrect. She's saying what the prosecutors were doing their job. This is what they do. These are the guidelines that they go by, and it is for me to interpret them. Now, what she does and whether she agrees something is too excessive, that's the process. But the President interfered in that process, and the Attorney General interfered in that process. She's now trying to correct it.</s>COLLINS: Well, that's what's so interesting is that it didn't sound like she was going to go along with the seven to nine years anyway. So they could have left it and she likely wouldn't have gone along with it. So--</s>PROKUPECZ: And Shan you - this is standard prosecutors I mean, they always ask for more.</s>WU: Right, right. And I think the Shimon's point we were talking about this earlier she is really trying to bring home the point to the public, other potential jurors in the future, this matters. There is a tendency now in the Trump Era, jurors may look at this and say, it doesn't matter what we do, this is all bunch of political nonsense. He is going to pardon everybody. I mean, she's really making an effort to say the system matters, there's integrity. Jurors' jobs are very sacred, the judge's job is sacred and the prosecutors' job is sacred.</s>KING: Again, if you look at the charges here one count of obstruction of an official proceeding. Five counts of false statements including lying to Congress one count of witness tampering. These are very serious allegations and they want to wave them off as Muller witch hunt, Mueller witch hoax. Again even if you at home believe Mueller was a witch hunt he was the prosecutor. He had the standing. Even if you believe Congress or - as to your point too this was a Republican committee at the time but Congress is an institution you cannot lie when you're under oath. This is almost a battle to reset the order in Washington with the Federal Judge trying to defend the system at a time she knows the President has been constantly undermining it and may be willing, either within days or hours of this sentencing, or maybe he'll wait until the appeal process plays out, to sign a piece of paper and say, never mind, Roger, you're free.</s>KIM: Definitely, I mean, the President has been trying to upend this system for some time. And you know you've seen this Judge in particular push back. You've seen Chief Justice John Roberts in an extraordinary fashion over a year ago push back on the President's criticisms of the judiciary whether he calls them Obama judges or Bush judges. And you've seen Attorney General William Barr trying to push back a little bit too, saying that you know he wishes he wouldn't tweet so much about the cases. It's been fascinating to watch that Trump/Barr relationship, though, because I think we can all agree it is nowhere near as sour as it was between the President and Jeff Sessions when he was in the Attorney General's position. So you know what's been Barr's motivation to speak out against the President's comments because we know he's not going to stop tweeting. He is just tweeting about it this morning when he's out on his western swing. Does Barr, who has been such a stalwart for the President on a lot of these issues, does he eventually get under the President's skin? I think that would be really important dynamic to watch.</s>KING: We'll watch it play out. The President even make new exhibits in that tension if you will relationship is this day plays out, we're going to take another quick break. We're waiting again for the sentencing of long-time Trump ally of Roger Stone, for his convictions on seven counts coming from the Mueller investigation. The sentencing is taking a bit longer than we anticipated because the judge is giving the defendant a tongue lashing. We'll be right back.