Stone was guilty.
But he will get good reviews here, unless he makes one bad statement against Trump, then everybody here will be ready to throw him under the bus.
Interestingly, the witness who Stone is accused of “tampering with” doesn’t feel that he is guilty. But I suppose you and the Dirty Democrats assaulting him for supporting POTUS know better.
Unfortunately for Stone, that's not for the witness to decide. And Stone is an absolute 'effing moron for doing anything with that witness that might remotely be construed as "witness tampering."
Personally, I think Stone should get a medal for lying to Congress. But he should probably rot in prison for even agreeing to testify to Congress in the first place. They never sent him a subpoena. It was all just a staged PR stunt to him.
It seems to me that the biggest problem facing these Trump supporters who have been run through the wringer in the criminal justice system is that they have an average IQ of about 90.
The witness intimidation was certainly a charge which may have gone either way. He clearly intimidated the witness by any normal meaning of the term, but the witness claims he was ineffective, in that the witness did not actually believe the physical threats. Physical threats are not the only type of intimidation and tampering — telling him to plead the 5th was also a form of tampering. It was wrong for the prosecutors to take this intimidation and use it to increase the requested sentence, and this is the thing Barr modified.
He definitely lied to congress. Most of the cases are not really contested; his “argument”, as it were, was to claim that his lies were not off-point to the questions asked. He didn’t testify, nor did he have others testify, that what he said was actually the truth, he just played the tape of his testimony, and argued it appears that it was more like opinion than fact.
His biggest clear lie was that he claimed NO CONTACT with trump or the campaign. Donald Trump himself submitted a sworn response that he did have contact with Stone, so if stone was not lying, it would mean Trump was lying.
Stone did not HAVE to tell any of these lies; he thought he was helping, but lying is not really helpful, and it was all stuff that didn’t matter. There is no crime in getting information from Wikileaks and using it — the crime, if any, is how Wikileaks got it, and there was no connection between Trump and Wikileaks in that regard.
I can imagine a new trial that might find him guilty on only 4 or 5 of the 7 charges, and a recommendation for a much lower sentence.
More likely, and hopeful, is that the judge does the right thing, throws out the conviction because of the tainted juror, and the justice department and Stone reach a plea deal.