Prosecutor to tell Congress of pressure from ‘highest levels’ of DOJ to give Roger Stone ‘a break'

[essentialsaltes]

Le swamp, c'est moi.

A federal prosecutor and another Justice Department official plan to tell Congress on Wednesday that Attorney General William P. Barr and his top deputies issued inappropriate orders amid investigations and trials “based on political considerations” and a desire to cater to President Trump.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland formerly detailed to Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, will tell the House Judiciary Committee that prosecutors involved in the criminal trial of Trump’s friend Roger Stone experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break” by requesting a lighter sentence, according to Zelinsky’s prepared remarks. The expectation, he intends to testify, was that Stone should be treated “differently and more leniently” because of his “relationship with the President.”

 

[Paulos23]

Trump is draining the swamp by breaking the dam above it.

 

[essentialsaltes]

From the prepared statement:

The first thing every AUSA learns is that we have an ethical and legal obligation to treat every defendant equally and fairly. No one is entitled to more or less because of who they are, who they know, or what they believe. In the United States of America, we do not prosecute people because of their politics.

And we don’t cut them a break because of their politics either. In the many cases I have been privileged to work on in my career, I have never seen political influence play any role in prosecutorial decision making. With one exception: United States v. Roger Stone.

What I saw was the Department of Justice exerting significant pressure on the line prosecutors in the case to obscure the correct Sentencing Guidelines calculation to which Roger Stone was subject – and to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in his trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction. Such pressure resulted in the virtually unprecedented decision to override the original sentencing recommendation in his case and to file a new sentencing memorandum that included statements and assertions at odds with the record and contrary to Department of Justice policy.

I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was “afraid of the President.”

When I learned that the Department was going to issue a new sentencing memo, I made the difficult decision to resign from the case and my temporary appointment in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. rather than be associated with the Department of Justice’s actions at sentencing.

 

[jardiniere]

This simply makes no rational sense to me. Stone was going to be pardoned by the President anyway, so why was Barr even attempting interference - it makes Barr look complicit in something unethical, when he could have stayed silent and Stone would go free, and Barr stays "clean".

 

[cow451]

Donald Trump operates like an organized crime boss. None of this should be a surprise.

 

[wing2000]

...it's like living in Nicaragua without having to travel there.

 

[whatbogsends]

This simply makes no rational sense to me. Stone was going to be pardoned by the President anyway, so why was Barr even attempting interference - it makes Barr look complicit in something unethical, when he could have stayed silent and Stone would go free, and Barr stays "clean".

Barr has been complicit in unethical things since his tenure as AG began.