Judge & Lawyers Wrap Up Conference Call in Stone Case; Federal Judges Association Calls Emergency Meeting over Stone Case
JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: There's no reason to delay for the new trial motion. There's already a three-month delay built in when the Bureau of Prisons decides where he will be designated and so on. She can decide on all of that while that process is going on and not delay the sentence any further.</s>KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the judge -- you say it is not surprising she didn't weigh into it and she is full steam ahead. But there's no way that Judge Berman Jackson isn't aware of what has been going on outside the courtroom, and on the president's Twitter feed even. What does it mean to you that she seemed to, as Sara said, staying above the fray, that she seems to be at the moment ignoring the outside issues? Is that a message?</s>RODGERS: I think it is the message that she is going to do her job. Her job is to sentence him. She will be potentially persuaded by the party's positions on sentencing. But she sat through the trial and, therefore, now knows more about it than the current prosecutors on the case. So she is not really relying on the parties to tell her what to do. She is going to make that sentence up in her own mind. She doesn't have to kind of get embroiled in all of that. She knows what she's going to do, I'm sure, already. She'll listen to the party's arguments and so on. So I think it is smart of her just not to mention it. Let the executive branch deal with their own problems and she'll just do her job.</s>BOLDUAN: Also noteworthy, as you just said, and Sara did as well, you have two new prosecutors on the case, as the prosecutors who were on the case have all resigned from the case in protest after all. So now, in addition to the letter that you signed onto, there's an Association of Federal Judges, they're also holding what "USA Today" is describing it as an emergency meeting to discuss the same thing, this controversy and -- around this case. And the way it is described is "growing concerns among members" and a, quote/unquote, "deepening crisis" involving the department and Bill Barr. And there's, yes, a lot of un-precedents that have happened. But this is a lot. From 2,000 former DOJ officials signing on to this letter, that is not only a statement to Barr, but also to other employees currently at DOJ and then this Association of Judges. It is a lot.</s>RODGERS: What you're seeing is people who are apolitical, who are independent officials, right, not political people, very concerned about where this is going, and people who wanted to kind of wait and see how things played out. A year ago, I signed onto a letter with a thousand former DOJ employees complaining about how Bill Barr treated the Mueller report and how misleading he was in that context. Now we have seen a series of events that take us much further than that. We're seeing essentially political activity in prosecutions. And it's not just about one person's sentence, you know, what Roger Stone gets. It is about where they're going from here, what is DOJ going to investigate. The president is on Twitter calling for political opponents to be thrown in jail. Is that where Bill Barr is going? That concerns a lot of people.</s>BOLDUAN: And there's a real question now. Bill Barr sat down in order to kind of do some damage control into the department for an interview last week, he said very, very directly, the tweets make it impossible for me to do my job. And then the president is continuing to do the same thing this morning in a series of tweets, attacking and in tweets and retweets, and quoting people, attacking the case, attacking anything related to the Mueller investigation. And I think there's a very real question not just what Bill Barr did, but as you're saying, what Bill Barr does now as it continues.</s>RODGERS: Of course. And, you know, many people think, including me, that what he's really concerned about is this all being out in the public, being so obvious. He's working behind the scenes, setting up U.S. attorneys to evaluate political cases, pushing John Durham to try to find some credence to, you know, the myths around CrowdStrike and Russia investigation, all of these politically charged activities of the Department of Justice. It looks like Bill Barr wants those to be on the downlow. And the president yelling about them on Twitter gets everybody riled up and concerned. And it seems like that's actually what Bill Barr is complaining about.</s>BOLDUAN: Let me ask you, back to this kind of emergency meeting that will be happening with the Association of Federal Judges, what do you think could come out of this meeting? It is a group of judges that has 1100 members on the federal bench.</s>RODGERS: Well, what is really interesting about that is, unlike the letter I signed, these are active judges, current judges, not former judges. That said, they don't really have any power to do anything, per se. What it would be was perhaps they would make a statement like the letter we signed and it just, you know, shows their grave concern about what is going on, talks about the principles of justice and integrity under the law. So we'll see if they make a statement or not. It looks like now they're just talking it over. They must have been getting a lot of concern from judges around the country about this. And we'll have to see where they go from here.</s>BOLDUAN: Well, that's understandable. It's good to see you, Jennifer. Thank you so much. Really Appreciate it.</s>RODGERS: Thanks.</s>BOLDUAN: We're just four days away from the Nevada caucuses. And Democratic Party officials there, they're feeling the pressure. After the chaos in Iowa, can Nevada guarantee a drama-free caucus? We'll be right back.