- Oct 17, 2011
- 43,072
- 46,199
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Legal Union (Other)
Hard to distinguish Bill Barr being a bad leader and Bill Barr doing things for the benefit of his boss.
The report upheld an account by then-Attorney General William P. Barr but also found that line prosecutors’ suspicions of political meddling by President Donald Trump’s administration were not unreasonable.
The report opens a window back on a bitterly contentious time in the department, when Barr was accused of undercutting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and of politicizing and replacing the leaders of two of its most important U.S. attorney offices for Washington and Manhattan.
Those accusations intensified after Barr removed Trump’s initial appointee as U.S. attorney two weeks before Stone’s sentencing, replacing Jessie K. Liu with his own counselor, Shea.
At sentencing, front-line prosecutors initially notified the court that a sentence of about seven to nine years would be appropriate under federal guidelines.
Within hours of that filing, and after Trump tweeted that the request was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice” that could not be allowed, Barr overruled the trial team. A second memo signed by supervisors retracted the recommendation, prompting all four prosecutors to quit the case. Some of them later said publicly that they believed they were undercut by department leaders to protect Trump’s longtime ally.
[Stone was give a little over 3 years, but Trump commuted the sentence.]
Barr declined to be interviewed for the inspector general’s investigation, but denied in testimony to the House and news interviews at the time that Trump’s Twitter tirade prompted the reversal. Instead, Barr said Shea — formerly one of his closest advisers at the department — had initially signaled to him that the recommendation would be much lower. Barr said he had been “very surprised” by the outcome.
Barr expressed to staffers that the action was not what he and Shea had discussed and needed to be “fixed,” but the inspector general found that Barr’s position was consistent before and after the recommendation was filed and before Trump tweeted.
[Barr wasn't bent by Trump's tweet; he was bent all along!]
“We recognize that the Department’s handling of the sentencing in the Stone case was highly unusual,” given the participation of Trump political appointees Shea and Barr, the report stated. However, it concluded that absent any prohibition on their involvement, their actions were ultimately left up to their own “discretion and judgment,” including on how they would affect public perceptions of the department’s integrity and independence.
see also:
DOJ review blames Stone sentencing flip on poor leadership, not politics
The Justice Department’s inspector general said “ineffectual leadership” led to the softening of Roger Stone’s 2020 sentencing recommendation, which ignited a political firestorm.The report upheld an account by then-Attorney General William P. Barr but also found that line prosecutors’ suspicions of political meddling by President Donald Trump’s administration were not unreasonable.
The report opens a window back on a bitterly contentious time in the department, when Barr was accused of undercutting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and of politicizing and replacing the leaders of two of its most important U.S. attorney offices for Washington and Manhattan.
Those accusations intensified after Barr removed Trump’s initial appointee as U.S. attorney two weeks before Stone’s sentencing, replacing Jessie K. Liu with his own counselor, Shea.
At sentencing, front-line prosecutors initially notified the court that a sentence of about seven to nine years would be appropriate under federal guidelines.
Within hours of that filing, and after Trump tweeted that the request was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice” that could not be allowed, Barr overruled the trial team. A second memo signed by supervisors retracted the recommendation, prompting all four prosecutors to quit the case. Some of them later said publicly that they believed they were undercut by department leaders to protect Trump’s longtime ally.
[Stone was give a little over 3 years, but Trump commuted the sentence.]
Barr declined to be interviewed for the inspector general’s investigation, but denied in testimony to the House and news interviews at the time that Trump’s Twitter tirade prompted the reversal. Instead, Barr said Shea — formerly one of his closest advisers at the department — had initially signaled to him that the recommendation would be much lower. Barr said he had been “very surprised” by the outcome.
Barr expressed to staffers that the action was not what he and Shea had discussed and needed to be “fixed,” but the inspector general found that Barr’s position was consistent before and after the recommendation was filed and before Trump tweeted.
[Barr wasn't bent by Trump's tweet; he was bent all along!]
“We recognize that the Department’s handling of the sentencing in the Stone case was highly unusual,” given the participation of Trump political appointees Shea and Barr, the report stated. However, it concluded that absent any prohibition on their involvement, their actions were ultimately left up to their own “discretion and judgment,” including on how they would affect public perceptions of the department’s integrity and independence.
see also:
