Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months

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Roger Stone, the longtime friend and former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, was sentenced to 40 months in prison Thursday at federal court in Washington amid speculation that Trump could potentially pardon him.

He was also sentenced to 24 months probation and fined $20,000.

“Stone was prosecuted for covering up for the president,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson said. She called the actions of the Justice Department in the case "unprecedented," referring to the political drama over his case and flatly rejected claims by Stone and Trump that the prosecution was politically motivated and unfair.

Stone's fate took on new significance last week when the career prosecutors who handled the case recommended a sentence of seven to nine years for Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering in November.

After Trump tweeted that recommendation was a "miscarriage of justice," Attorney General William Barr overruled the prosecutors and the Justice Department submitted a new recommendation calling on Judge Amy Berman Jackson to give Stone a much lighter sentence. Shortly after, in an exclusive interview with ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas, Barr warned Trump to stop tweeting and commenting on the case, saying he was making it "impossible" to do his job.

Sources have told ABC News that Barr, who has called the Stone prosecution "righteous," is seriously considering resigning.

Stone, 67, was convicted of misleading congressional investigators on several key elements of their probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including communications he had with the Trump campaign about the WikiLeaks dissemination of damaging documents stolen from Democrats.