Shorter sentence sought for Stone
4 prosecutors exit case after being overruled by DOJ
WASHINGTON — Senior Justice Department officials i ntervened to overrule front-line prosecutors and will recommend a more lenient sentence for Roger Stone, convicted last year of impeding investigators in a bid to protect his longtime friend President Donald Trump, a senior department official said Tuesday.
The highly unusual move prompted one of the government’s key prosecutors to resign and three others to withdraw from the case.
It came after federal prosecutors in Washington asked a judge late Monday to sentence Stone to seven to nine years in prison for trying to sabotage a congressional investigation that threatened Trump and the president criticized their recommendation on Twitter as “horrible and very unfair.”
As he did after a jury convicted Stone on seven felony charges in November, Trump attacked federal law enforcement officials, saying “the real crimes were on the other side.”
“Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Trump added.
The development was a tumultuous turn in one of the most high-profile cases brought by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, whose investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election cast a
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lengthy shadow over Trump’s presidency. Disagreements between United States attorneys and their Justice Department superiors rarely burst into public view, especially in criminal cases that have commanded the public spotlight for months.
Hours after the Justice Department said that it would lower Stone’s guidelines, a prosecutor on the case, Jonathan Kravis, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the court he had resigned “and therefore no longer represents the government in this matter.”
Kravis had been a veteran prosecutor in Washington, and though not part of Mueller’s original team, was nonetheless involved in multiple cases brought by the special counsel’s office.
Besides the Stone prosecution, Kravis had also signed onto the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which resolved with a guilty plea, and against a Russian troll farm accused of sponsoring a cover social media campaign aimed at dividing public opinion during the 2016 presidential election.
And a member of Mueller’s team who helped lead the prosecution of Stone, Aaron Zelinsky, withdrew from the case. He also resigned from a special assignment with the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, though he will continue to work for the Justice Department in Baltimore.
He was working there when he was selected in 2017 for the Mueller team.
He was involved in cases aimed at determining what knowledge the Trump campaign had about Democratic emails hacked by Russia and what efforts Trump aides made to get information about them. He was also involved in the prosecution of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign aide who played a critical role in the FBI launching its investigation in the summer of 2016.
A third prosecutor, Adam Jed, an original member of Mueller’s team, also withdrew from the case. His status at the Justice Department was not clear.
Before joining Mueller’s team, he worked on civil cases at the Justice Department.
By Tuesday evening, a fourth prosecutor, Michael Marando, had left the case.
After the attorneys quit the case, Justice Department officials filed a revised sentencing memorandum with the judge, arguing its initial recommendation could be “considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances,” but that it would defer to the court.
Department officials defended the DOJ’s intervention, saying they were taken aback by the request for such a stiff sentence, according to a law enforcement official who offered the department’s view of what happened on condition of anonymity because the Stone case was ongoing.
The prosecutors had suggested a lighter prison term in discussions with Justice Department officials, according to the official. The department decided to override the prosecutors’ decision soon after the sentencing memorandum was filed Monday evening, said Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department.
She said that department officials did not discuss the case with anyone at the White House, including the president, and were not reacting to any directive from Trump or to his criticism on Twitter.
Trump later told reporters that he didn’t speak to Justice officials. “I would be able to do it if I wanted,” he said.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said that if the president intervened in any way to reverse the decision of career prosecutors, it would be “a blatant abuse of power.”
Associated Press contributed.