Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Thursday that the recommended sentence from prosecutors against former President Trump's adviser Roger Stone was “truly absurd” and “extraordinary,”
“The level of corruption among some of the career professionals is amazing and they’re perfectly willing to use that bias,“ Gingrich told “Fox & Friends.”
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“For a guy for whom this is a first offense, a non-violent offense, not drug-related, not violent crime related — to be given as a recommendation a maximum sentence is truly extraordinary,” Gingrich said.
Fox News reported earlier this week that top brass at the Department of Justice were "shocked" that prosecutors handling the Stone case had recommended that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson reduce the 67-year-old's sentence to between 87 and 108 months in prison.
The prosecutors asserted in the Monday filing that Stone's conduct post-indictment – including violating the judge's social media gag orders – merited a sentence much longer than the 15 to 21 months that the defense said was actually advisable under the federal guidelines.
In a new amended filing Tuesday afternoon, the DOJ told Jackson that the government "respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months' imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances," but that the government "ultimately defers to the court as to the specific sentence to be imposed."
Gingrich pushed back on the criticism that President Trump is influencing the Justice Department to reduce Stone's sentence, highlighting that regardless of the matter, the president has “unfettered power” vested in the Constitution to pardon Stone if he chooses to do so.
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“If he really wanted to intervene, he could just issue a pardon and it’ll be over, but he hasn’t done that.”
“Any reasonable person would look at this and say, this is a real abuse of power by some career lawyers who are anti-Trump going after a Trump supporter at a level which they would never apply to somebody who had supported Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders," said Gingrich, questioning why there have been no consequences for misconduct by the FBI in the Trump-Russia probe.
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