Prosecutors Quit Roger Stone Case After DOJ Top Brass Meddles In Sentencing

All four federal prosecutors who ran the Roger Stone trial abruptly dropped out of the case on Tuesday after senior Department of Justice leadership intervened to take the rare step of walking back the prosecutors sentencing recommendation. The extraordinary series of events marks the latest sign of President Donald Trump and his appointees politicizing DOJ.

On Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia filed a new recommendation asking that Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, be sentenced to prison but not suggesting any particular length of time.

The more lenient recommendation was a rapid turnaround after federal prosecutors Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Adam C. Jed, Jonathan Kravis and Michael Marando told the court on Monday that Stone should face seven to nine years behind bars for witness tampering and lying to Congress. But that was before Trump publicly raged against the proposed sentence, tweeting that this miscarriage of justice cannot be allowed.

This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Donald J. Trump","author_url":"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump","cache_age":86400,"description":"This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false}},"provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Donald J. 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This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020

A jury convicted Stone in November on seven counts, including witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstructing an official proceeding. He was one of the highest-profile Trump allies to face prosecution as a result of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office had intensely debated what sentence to recommend for Stone, according to The Washington Post , ultimately settling on 87 to 108 months to reflect the severity of his crimes. They cited federal guidelines that call for longer sentences if the offender has threatened physical harm or property damage, which Stone did when he told prosecution witness Randy Credico that he should prepare to die.

The prosecutors also wrote that a longer sentence would send the message that Stones crimes, which took place in the context of a congressional investigation on matters of critical national importance, should not be taken lightly.

But following Trumps overnight tweet, which he sent just before 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Justice Department reportedly decided to overrule the career prosecutors. Higher-ups at DOJ were not accurately briefed on the initial recommendation, a Fox News source claimed. (DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec told Fox News that the decision to make a new sentencing recommendation was reached before Trumps tweet and that DOJ has had no contact with the White House on the matter.)

Zelinskys resignation as a prosecutor on the Stone case Tuesday afternoon was the first dramatic response to the reports of DOJ walking back the sentencing request. He was one of Muellers top prosecutors during the Russia investigation and had been a Supreme Court clerk for both liberal and conservative justices. As part of his withdrawal from the Stone case, Zelinsky also resigned as a special assistant U.S. attorney on loan to the U.S. attorneys office in D.C., but he retained his position with the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Maryland.

Kravis included in his withdrawal filing that he was resigning as an assistant U.S. attorney serving in the D.C. office. Jed is another former member of Muellers team who, like Zelinsky, moved to the U.S. attorneys office in D.C. for the Stone trial.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for an investigation into the reduced sentencing recommendation in a letter to the DOJs Inspector General .

The American people must have confidence that justice in this country is dispensed impartially, Schumer said. That confidence cannot be sustained if the president or his political appointees are permitted to interfere in prosecution and sentencing recommendations in order to protect their friends and associates.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he was exonerated in the special counsels investigation and has lashed out at anyone or anything that implicated him in wrongdoing. In his early Tuesday tweet, he claimed that the real crimes were on the other side. The Mueller investigation led to numerous indictments, guilty pleas and convictions of Trump world figures such as the presidents former attorney Michael Cohen, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Stone.

Trump has not ruled out pardoning Stone, a Republican operative going back to the Nixon years who has affiliations with conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists and who was one of Trumps most loyal advocates during the Russia probe.