Prosecutors quit amid revision of Stone sentence
Change of course comes after Trump said friend was treated unfairly; Justice Department denies any connection
WASHINGTON — All four career prosecutors handling the case against Roger Stone withdrew from the legal proceedings Tuesday — and one quit his job entirely — after the Justice Department signaled it planned to undercut their sentencing recommendation for President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and confidant.
The sudden and dramatic moves came after prosecutors and their superiors had argued for days over the appropriate penalty for Stone and exposed what some career Justice Department employees say is a continuing pattern of the historically independent law enforcement institution being bent to Trump’s political will.
Almost simultaneously, Trump decided to revoke the nomination to a top Treasury Department post of his former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, who had supervised the Stone case when it went to trial.
The cascade of controversy began Monday, when career prosecutors handling the case recommended that a judge sentence Stone — convicted in November of obstructing Congress and witness tampering — to between seven and nine years in federal prison.
Stone has been a friend and adviser to Trump since the 1980s and was a key figure in his 2016 campaign, working to discover damaging information on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. His was the last conviction secured by special coun
sel Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The president suggested angrily on Twitter that Stone deserved more-lenient treatment.
“This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” Trump wrote early Tuesday. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Hours later, a senior Justice Department official told reporters that the agency’s leadership was “shocked” by the recommendation of a seven- to nine-year sentence and would soon revise it.
“That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case. “The department finds the recommendation extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offenses.”
One by one, the career prosecutors, two of whom had worked on Mueller’s investigation, filed notices in court of their intention to leave the case. Though none of the prosecutors gave a reason, their asking to do so was highly unusual and suggested they could not ethically affix their names to the government’s revised position.
Career Justice Department lawyers similarly moved in 2018 to withdraw from a case when the Trump administration decided it would not defend the Affordable Care Act against a challenge to its constitutionality. One of those lawyers resigned over the matter.
Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the White House did not communicate with the agency Monday or Tuesday about the Stone case and that the decision to reverse course was made before Trump’s tweet.
Trump told reporters later Tuesday, “I have not been involved in it at all,” though in the same remarks he called the career prosecutors’ initial recommendation “an insult to our country.”
“That was a horrible aberration. These are, I guess, the same Mueller people that put everybody through hell, and I think it was a disgrace,” Trump said. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors on the Stone case, wrote in a court filing that he had resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving government altogether. Three others — Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed and Michael Marando — filed notices with the judge saying “please notice the withdrawal” from the case.
Zelinsky, a former member of Mueller’s team, also indicated in a filing he was quitting his special assignment to the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., though a spokeswoman said he will remain an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore.
Through a spokeswoman, Zelinsky declined to comment. Jed and Kravis also declined to comment. Marando could not immediately be reached.
As the drama unfolded Tuesday afternoon, Trump also decided to withdraw his nomination of D.C.’s former U.S. attorney, Jessie Liu, to serve as Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, people familiar with the matter said. The withdrawal was first reported by Axios.
The reason for the withdrawal was not clear. Liu had left her U.S. attorney post last month in a somewhat unusual move, because she had not yet received Senate confirmation for her new job. She was replaced on an interim basis by Timothy Shea, a former counselor to Attorney General William Barr.
An administration official said Trump has been lobbied extensively against Liu by those who did not like how she handled the U.S. attorney’s office — particularly as it related to the Mueller probe. Several people familiar with the matter said Liu had no role in Stone’s sentencing recommendation, having left the office before it was sent to supervisors for approval. Liu, whose confirmation hearing had been scheduled for Thursday, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former Justice Department officials and others characterized the department’s abrupt shift on the Stone case as an egregious example of the president and his attorney general manipulating federal law enforcement to serve their political interests.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate, writing, “This situation has all the indicia of improper political interference in a criminal prosecution.”
David Laufman, a former Justice Department official, called it a “shocking, cram-down political intervention” in the criminal justice process.
“We are now truly at a break-glass-in-case-offire moment for the Justice Dept.,” he wrote on Twitter.
Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, said it was “unprecedented, wrong and ultimately dangerous.”
Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said the move amounted to “obstruction of justice.
“We are seeing a full-frontal assault on the rule of law in America,” Pascrell said. “Direct political interference in our justice system is a hallmark of a banana republic. Despite whatever Trump, William Barr, and their helpers think, the United States is a nation of laws and not an authoritarian’s paradise.”
In its revised sentencing recommendation, the Justice Department essentially took aim at its own line attorneys, saying their previous guidance “could be considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances.” The memorandum was signed by Shea and his criminal division supervisor, John Crabb.
“Ultimately, the government defers to the Court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case,” they wrote.
The decision to file a new sentencing memo was made by officials in the attorney general’s office and the deputy attorney general’s office, according to a senior Justice Department official. The official could not point to another instance of Justice Department headquarters overruling and replacing a sentencing memorandum a day after a filing but insisted it was not unusual for law enforcement officials to “correct the record.”
“I don’t think anyone thinks this went smoothly,” the official said, while declining to discuss who knew what inside the department about the Stone sentencing recommendation.