The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dems want another impeachment? It’s not for who you think
WASHINGTON — The word impeachment is echoing in the halls of Congress again with its sights set on a new target.
Some Democrats are now publicly calling for the impeachment of U.S. Attorney General William Barr after a series of objections to how the Department of Justice has handled investigations into the conduct of President Donald Trump, his associates and his staff.
“Impeachment of Barr is now clearly appropriate,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Twitter Friday morning. “At the very least, the investigation must be penetrating and powerful.”
Blumenthal’s comment followed a New York Times report that detailed how Barr tried to challenge the prosecution of Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen and rein in the independent investigations of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney, left his post Saturday after Barr announced his resignation in a press release Friday, apparently without telling Berman. Berman was in the midst of an investigation into the conduct of former New York City mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
While many Democrats have publicly objected to Barr’s leadership of the DOJ, there Democrats who won’t go far as to say he should be impeached.
“I am not in support of bringing forth article of impeachment toward Barr,” Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, said. “I’m not happy at all about the way he has politicized the justice system or the way that he operates where if the American people are not happy with the Attorney General then that needs to be reflected in our votes... we continue to conduct oversight to give the American people all of the information in November, but as for me, I think that we’re at a point where we are close enough to the election.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed Thursday, saying “One hundred and thirty-one days from now, we will have the solution to many problems, one of them being Barr.”
But House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that his committee “may very well” consider impeaching Barr. The committee is investigating several Justice Department actions and will have Barr testify in July, after threatening him with a subpoena.
The Justice Department came under the spotlight again this week when one of the federal prosecutors who withdrew in protest over the Department of Justice’s handling of its case against Trump ally Roger Stone said the government gave Stone a lesser sentence because of his connections to the president.
“What I heard – repeatedly – was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President,” Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant attorney general in Maryland testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I was told that the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break, and that the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing instructions to us were based on political considerations. I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was ‘afraid of the President.’”
Born in Norwalk, Stone, a longtime informal adviser to Trump, was arrested by the FBI in 2019 on charges of lying and witness tampering in connection with the release of Democrats' hacked emails in 2016. In November, he was convicted of seven federal charges and sentenced to 40 months in prison.
A judge Friday ordered Stone to report to jail on July 14 after his lawyers had filed a motion to delay his incarceration until September due to coronavirus. The DOJ had not opposed this request, citing its policy for older and medically vulnerable inmates during the pandemic. Stone will be in home confinement until he reports to prison.
Zelinsky was among the prosecutors who helped write the original sentencing recommendation for
Stone, before orders came from the top of DOJ that Stone should get a lesser sentence. Then some prosecutors working on the case resigned.
“To be clear, my concern is not with this sentencing outcome – and I am not here to criticize the sentence Judge Jackson imposed in the case or the reasoning that she used,” Zelinsky said. “It is about process and the fact that the Department of Justice treated Roger Stone differently and more leniently in ways that are virtually, if not entirely, unprecedented.”
A gig for John Frey
In other news, Trump announced Friday that he will appoint John H. Frey of Ridgefield to be a member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The Advisory Council on
Historic Preservation is a federal agency that — you guessed it — tries to promote preservation across the government and country. It makes recommendations to Congress and the president.
Frey is a Republican state representative and serves on the Republican National Committee. He is co-owner of Century 21 Landmark Properties in Ridgefield and the ‘government representative’ for the University of Connecticut Business School Center for Real Estate and Economic Studies. At various times, he’s served on the Connecticut Real Estate Commission and the Connecticut Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission.
Frey did not respond to a request for comment Friday.