DOJ officials blast politicization under Barr
WASHINGTON — Two Justice Department officials recounted to Congress in stinging detail Wednesday how political appointees had intervened in criminal and antitrust cases to advance the personal interests of President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr.
Aaron Zelinsky, a prosecutor who worked on the Russia investigation, told the House Judiciary Committee that senior law enforcement officials had stepped in to overrule career prosecutors and seek a more lenient prison sentence for Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone “because of politics.”
“In the United States of America, we do not prosecute people based on politics, and we don’t cut them a break based on politics,” said Zelinsky, who testified by video because of the coronavirus pandemic. “But that wasn’t what happened here. Roger Stone was treated differently because of politics.”
John Elias, a senior career official in the antitrust division, charged that his supervisors improperly used their powers to investigate the marijuana industry and a deal between California and four major automakers at the behest of Barr. He likened their efforts to burdensome harassment meant to punish companies for decisions the attorney general and the president opposed.
“Personal dislike of the industry is not a valid basis upon which to ground an antitrust investigation,”
Elias said of the cannabis cases.
The two accounts painted a damning portrait of the Justice Department under Barr, made all the more remarkable given that the witnesses were both still department employees.
They increased pressure on Barr to further explain decisions related to criminal cases involving Trump’s associates and the abrupt firing of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who had overseen some of the investigations into Trump allies.
Not long after the hearing got underway, the Justice Department announced that Barr had agreed to appear himself before the panel July 28. Democrats had been threatening to issue a subpoena for his appearance.
Seeking to further increase pressure on the attorney general, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the panel’s chairman, said after the hearing that the committee “may very well” pursue impeachment proceedings against Barr — a highly unlikely outcome given the political reality of a fast-approaching election.
During the hearing, lawmakers spent more time trying to argue divergent political points about Barr, Trump and the investigations that have hung over his presidency than they did eliciting facts about the Justice Department from either witness.
“These are merely the symptoms of an underlying disease,” Nadler said in opening remarks. “The sickness that we must address is Mr. Barr’s use of the Department of Justice as a weapon to serve the president’s petty, private interests.”