Roger Stone Faces Judge Again For Concealing Book Release

criminal case or special counsel Robert Muller. Now Stone is trying to explain himself to the judge once again, saying that he didn't mean to mislead her when he failed to tell her about the paperback release of a book he wrote about the election, complete with a new introduction and title, The Myth of Russian Collusion. In it, he refers to Mueller as a crook, joining me as former federal prosecutor Robert Min's a partner, McCarter and English Bob.

In a March first warts filing, Stones lawyers referred to the book as an upcoming release when it's been available online since February nine. There are emails talking about whether publishing the book would break the gag order from February fifteen through February, how do they explain not telling the

judge about the book while they're litigating the gag order. Well, that's going to be the big question here, because if there's one thing that is going to anger Judge Jackson here in addition to rager Stone potentially violating the gag order, it's that they were not candid with her when they last appeared in front of her, essentially on this very issue.

So if it turns out as it appears, that there were emails and discussions and that at the time they appeared in court they knew this book was coming out with these incendiary comments about Robert Mueller in the new introduction, She's going to be very angry and may well this side to put Roger Stone in prison leading up to his trial. Well, this is a tough judge who put Paul Manafort behind bars pending trial for interfering with a witness. She lets Stone off with just a tougher gag order

last time. But she did say this is not baseball. You don't get a third chance. Does that sort of put her in the spot of having to put him in prison, or could there be some lesser kind of fine or gag order. Well, I think judges are reluctant to put people in prison leading up to a trial. In the case of Paul Manafort, the accusation was that there was witness tampering, which really is in many ways a more serious defense because it goes to the real

heart of the trial. The allegation is that you're trying to affect witness testimony, and that really is a very very serious issue. This is a little less serious in the sense that it is simply give these statements to the public and perhaps affecting the jury pool for this trial. But I think here the judge drew a pretty bright red line, and it appears at roger Stone crossed that line. And judges are reluctant to give you a chance. Have you then essentially violate the order and then come back

and give you a second chance. So she could do either one. She could leave him out, But I wouldn't be surprised to see if she decides to put him in jail. If she decides to leave him out, what could she do that she hasn't done already? Well, in addition to making it very clear that he is not to make any public statements or to tweet, or to do any other things that he's already done, she could,

for example, prohibit him from tweeting at all. She could say that he is not allowed to go onto the internet. She could put him under house to rest. She could prohibit him from having contact with anybody in the media. So there are a number of things she could do to kind of tighten the noose short of putting him in jail. We've talked before about how Roger Stone has this relentless pursuit of publicity and this at this point

he does apparently Dean Bunny for his defense. According to the court papers that and the emails, the books have not been flying off the shelves even since his arrest, which was highly publicized. Could this possibly be a publicity stunt to draw attention to the book and more sales

or is that too dangerous? Well, that's the cynical view here, and anybody who knows about Roger Stone and his history knows that this is an individual who sort of flirts with the line of disaster and is courting publicity, even when that publicity sometimes may not be all positive, and even when that publicity could possibly land him in jail. So the judge may well view him as using the court as a vehicle for promoting his book, which will only further anger the judge. And I think he will

seriously clip his wings if she doesn't put him in jail. Altogether, this judge is going to be sentencing Paul Manafort. His first sentencing was really caused a lot of uproar because it was so lenient and uproar about the judicial system as well as the judge sentencing in this particular case. What's likely from Judge Jackson tomorrow. Well, Judge Jackson is a different judge than Judge Ellis who sentenced Paul Manafort

in the trial in Virginia. But Judge Jackson also has different facts before her because he was the one, as you mentioned June, who put Paul Manafort in prison for campering with witnesses. She also is aware of the sentence that Paul Manafort received from Judge Ellis, and I think that we will see a sentence here that certainly adds additional time to the prison time that Paul Mantifort got from Judge Ellis. That was a sentence that was viewed

as highly controversial. The sentence and guidelines were about twenty years, and while everybody expected there to be a departure downward, very few people expected a departure as low as forty seven months, which is what he received from Judge Ellis. So I think we can almost certainly count on additional jail time coming out of this sentence from Juke Jackson.

Whether that's done by giving consecutive time or whether she just adds a sentence that is beyond the forty seven months that was imposed by Jig Ellis, right, will be very interesting to see how she handles that and how different it is, if at all, from Judge Ellis. Thanks so much, Bob. That's Robert Manzy's a former federal prosecutor and a partner now at McCarter in English. Thanks for

listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I am June Brosso. This is Bloomberg h