I assume Stone's lawyers would appeal (they would regardless) and with DOJ lawyers that do not want to enforce this, it would be an easy appeal to win.
thanks. After I asked the question I actually read the opinion and learned it was a pretty dumb question
What I really don’t understand is how a criminal trial interferes with his Article II duties but a civil or impeachment trial doesn’t. Or is it the outcome of conviction? Is the question whether you can jail a sitting president?
Given that stone repeatedly pissed off the judge I can’t imagine she’s going to be particularly lenient. She even suggested holding a contempt hearing after the trial was over.
Trump, thru his twitter enabler, is losing it a/b Stone & Mueller. He prob was told:1 He's badly exposed to prosecution post WH- the trial proved his direct line to GRU (Russian Intel) thru Stone & Wikileaks2 Stone pardon means he testifies w/o 5A in 20213 Stone may try a deal— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) February 12, 2020 I touched on this earlier in this thread... but it appears to me his only options to avoid dying in jail are to win in November or resign and get a pardon from Pence. On the second opinion- at this point what would be in it for Pence?
Ah, the ol’ impeachment where the prez comes out stronger than ever. What would be in it for Pence? Maybe not getting torn limb from limb by MAGA faithful
No it would not. The standard of review on sentencing is highly deferential as long as the sentence is within the proper range. DOJ lawyers could argue that trial judge was wrong but if the sentence was within the range, that argument would be frivolous.
That's not how it works tho. They would have to show that the trial judge did something wrong or improper to even get in the door. The only time the DOJ lawyers need to get involved is if it actually made it to a hearing. Take the judge that gave the kid a super light sentence after his rape conviction because he came from a "good family", was a "good kid", and would "have his life destroyed" by a strong sentence.. That one fell outside the bounds of the norms for sentencing, so an appeal was warranted. However, in this case, if the judge isn't heavy handed and follows proper procedures, there isn't much to appeal.
If the appeals panel is a majority Trumpican, what stops them from simply ignoring what they’re supposed to do?
I couldn't say without looking at the sentencing guidelines applicable to the crimes for which he was convicted. I'd say that whatever the initial recommendation was (from the now-withdrawn AUSAttys) would be a good guess.
Pundits think all these presidential & DOJ shenanigans could anger the judge at sentencing. The govt is likely going to have some 'splainin to do.
In a worst case scenario, sure, nothing. But speaking from experience, appellate court judges are really really hesitant to reverse a sentence that is within the lawful sentencing range. Edit: I'll add that currently, there are only two Trump appointees on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is where any appeal of Stone's sentence would go. And, IMHO, only one of them could be considered a true Trump lackey.
They will almost assuredly have some explaining to do, but her attention will be pointed at the new DOJ lawyers, not Stone. They will need to properly explain why he shouldn't be punished for a charge he was convicted on and for violating his gag order (particularly the nature of the violation). The most likely outcome of her attention is that she would ignore the DOJ's new sentencing recommendation and come up with a sentence on her own, it won't be to additionally punish Stone.
If I had a nickel for every time Donald Trump should be figuratively or literally nailed to a wall and wasn't, I'd be as rich as Donald Trump.
This makes me feel better although worst case scenario seems to have kicked us in the balls quite a few times in recent years
That's not saying too much. I doubt he is very "rich" at this point. Now, rich as Tom Steyer or Michael Bloomberg, now you're talking.
No doubt. That's why I snuck a peak at the D.C. Circuit lineup to see the number of Trump toadies there.
Missed this earlier. All of those scenarios certainly would interfere, although impeachment is written into the Constitution so the response to that sort of interference is "too bad." But yeah, one of the reasons some legal scholars are skeptical as to the logic supporting the OLC memo is that more recently with the Clinton scandal, the Supreme Court was fine to let depositions, etc., go forward. Some scholars do think, as you surmise, that perhaps the real issue is conviction. Clinton's former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger wrote a decent summary pertaining to all of this nearly two years ago. https://www.lawfareblog.com/indicting-president-not-foreclosed-complex-history
Barr "gets mad" about Trump tweets ABC falls for it Seriously .... NEW: In an interview with ABC News, Attorney General Bill Barr says he doesn't want the President to tweet about cases. “I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases” https://t.co/OoVj7yepkf— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) February 13, 2020
TBF, Barr just wants Trump to stop tweeting about cases when Trump can just call Barr up and tell him what to do. Barr is perfectly willing to do what the Trump wants, it is just that tweets are far too public and make it hard for Barr to do Trump's bidding.