Judge Amy Berman Jackson Says Congressional Investigators Were Not Part Of An 'Anti-Trump Cabal'

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced President Donald Trump's long-time adviser Roger Stone to three years and four months in prison and said his lies to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election amounted to a threat to American democracy.

In a stern lecture during a 2-1/2-hour sentencing hearing for the veteran Republican operative, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson also delivered an implicit rebuke to Trump, who has attacked her along with the jury and prosecutors in the high-profile case.

"There was nothing unfair, phoney or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution," Jackson said, citing words that the Republican president has used.

[...] "He was not prosecuted - as some have complained - for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president," Jackson said.

"The truth still exists. The truth still matters," Jackson added. "Roger Stone's insistence that it doesn't, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our fundamental institutions - to the very foundation of our democracy."

[...] The judge noted that Stone was not charged with or convicted of having any role in conspiring with Russia. But Jackson said Stone's effort to obstruct a congressional investigation into Russian election meddling "was deliberate, planned - not one isolated incident." The investigators were not some "secret anti-Trump cabal," the judge said, but members of Congress from both parties at the time when the committee was controlled by the president's fellow Republicans.

No deep state. No secret society. No anti-Trump cabal at the FBI. No evidence that political bias influenced decisions in the Clinton probe. No indication that Comey’s errors of judgment did anything but help the Trump Campaign.

No vindication for the President.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 14, 2018