DOJ, Roger Stone at odds over showing ‘Godfather’ clip during trial

The Justice Department and Roger Stone’s attorneys remain in a standoff over whether jurors should be shown a clip from “The Godfather, Part II” during the longtime Donald Trump associate’s upcoming trial.

At issue is a four-minute scene from the 1974 movie in which a character named Frank Pentangeli backtracks from giving Congress damning testimony about the Corleone crime family.

Stone referenced the film scene to a key witness who was about to appear before lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. That makes it a “critical part” of the Justice Department’s case charging Stone with lying to Congress and obstruction of justice, the government said in a filing on Thursday.

The department earlier this summer had asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson for permission to show the film scene during Stone’s trial, which is scheduled to start Nov. 5 in Washington and last at least two weeks.

But Stone’s lawyers objected, and during a pretrial hearing last month maintained that the clip could prejudice the jury into making connections between the defendant and the Mafia. Jackson acknowledged their point and urged both sides to find an alternative.

In Thursday’s five-page filing, the Justice Department said those talks didn’t go well. Stone’s attorneys rejected a plan that would have involved jurors being read a jointly written statement describing the scene. Instead, they said, the film should come up only if witnesses talked about it during the trial.

“In the government’s view, this confirms the importance of playing the short scene for the jury,” the Justice Department prosecutors told Jackson. “That scene played a direct part in the very obstructive acts charged in this case.”

A breakdown in talks over the “Godfather” scene puts the issue back before Jackson, who is scheduled to hold another pretrial conference one day before jury selection begins on Nov. 4.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine