The sentencing remark
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The sentencing remark is John Kiriakou's account of what the judge said from the bench when imposing sentence on him in 2013, following the plea agreement his attorneys had persuaded him to accept.

The remark

By Kiriakou's account the judge took a swipe at him, saying: "Mr Kiriakou, I wish that I could give you the maximum, because that's what I would give you." 

Kiriakou's reading of it

Kiriakou's response is that she could have given him the maximum, that nothing prevented it, and that the remark was therefore made for another audience. He notes that every national security reporter in Washington was arrayed in the gallery, and reads the comment as an attempt to appear the great defender of the intelligence community. He adds, and his interviewers agree, that this is not a judge's job. 

He attributes the disposition to background rather than to malice toward him personally, observing that she is a former prosecutor, as he says all the other judges are. 

What she nonetheless ordered

The same hearing produced the placement request Kiriakou's attorneys had made: that he be sent to a minimum security work camp rather than a prison. The prosecutors did not object and the judge so ordered, directing him to the federal work camp at Loretto, Pennsylvania.  On arrival he was placed in the main prison instead. 

Context

The sentence followed a plea agreement Kiriakou had initially refused and then accepted after his own attorneys intervened, one of them telling him that the case was not about justice but about mitigating damage. 

See also

- "It's about mitigating damage"
- The Loretto camp mix-up
- FCI Loretto
- Sentencing enhancements
