Bill Barr just blew it spectacularly

| 4:09 pm EST February 20, 2020
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Roger Stone has been given a sentence of forty months in prison, which is right in the middle of the sentencing guidelines, which is what Judge Amy Berman Jackson always does with her sentencing, so it’s the same sentence she was always going to give him.

Based on the reactions today, some folks within the Resistance appear to be hugely confused about all of this. First they thought that Roger Stone was somehow actually going to get seven to nine years in prison, simply because the initial DOJ sentencing recommendation called for it. Then they thought Stone was going to get a super light sentence, simply because Bill Barr forcibly lowered the recommendation. Nothing works that way, of course.

Prosecutors nearly always ask for a harsh sentence. Defense attorneys always ask for a lenient sentence. The two sides are essentially bargaining with each other by starting at extremes. Except it doesn’t really matter, because the judge then does whatever the judge was already planning to do. Bill Barr is on his second stint running the DOJ. He knows all of this. The only possible explanation for his meddling was that he was counting on Trump not knowing any of this, and mistakenly believing that Barr actually somehow got Stone a shorter sentence.

The trouble is, because Bill Barr created such a major scandal while changing the sentencing recommendation, he’s put a spotlight on how this process actually works. There’s a good chance that even the oblivious, sheltered Donald Trump will end up hearing the truth, which is that Barr didn’t actually accomplish anything, beyond making a mess. It’s not clear if there would have been a smart way for Barr to interfere in the Stone case, but he ended up choosing a particularly dumb way, and he blew it. Now we wait to see if Trump ends up focusing his rage at Barr over the debacle.