US President Trump under fire for intervening in Roger Stone case

US President Donald Trump faced fresh accusations of abuse of power Tuesday after appearing to pressure the Justice Department to seek a lighter prison sentence for his longtime political aide Roger Stone. Stone was convicted in November last year of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to cheat in the 2016 election.

Four government attorneys who prosecuted Stone resigned from the case after their original sentence proposal for seven to nine years was reversed by the department following a critical latenight tweet from Trump.

Trump turned his ire late Tuesday on the judge in Stone’s case, Amy Berman Jackson, suggesting she had shown bias against the president’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who has been imprisoned on multiple counts of fraud and other charges.

“Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!” Trump tweeted.

Manafort was held in a self-contained suite in prison, Jackson said during his prosecution, dismissing the defense team’s claim that he was in solitary confinement as “disingenuous.”

Trump’s extraordinary intervention threw the Justice Department into turmoil amid allegations that Attorney General Bill Barr was doing Trump’s bidding rather than defending an independent justice system.

Senior House Democrat Adam Schiff said Trump’s apparent interference threatened the rule of law.

“It would be a blatant abuse of power if President Trump has in fact intervened to reverse the recommendations of career prosecutors at the Department of Justice,” Schiff said. “Doing so would send an unmistakable message that President Trump will protect those who lie to Congress to cover up his own misconduct, and that the attorney general will join him in that effort.”