The Justice Department\u2019s inspector general on Wednesday blamed \u201cineffectual leadership\u201d and not political interference for the softening of Roger Stone\u2019s sentencing recommendation in February 2020 after his conviction for lying to Congress. The report upheld an account by then-Attorney General William P. Barr but also found that line prosecutors\u2019 suspicions of political meddling by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration were not unreasonable.<\/p>\n
A longtime political confidant of Trump and a GOP consultant, Stone was found guilty by a jury in November 2019 of lying to a House panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. At sentencing, front-line prosecutors initially notified the court that a sentence of about six to seven years would be appropriate under federal guidelines.<\/p>\n
Within hours of that filing, and after Trump tweeted that the request was \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and a \u201cmiscarriage of justice\u201d that could not be allowed, Barr overruled the trial team. A second memo signed by supervisors retracted the recommendation, prompting all four prosecutors to quit the case. Some of them later said publicly that they believed they were undercut by department leaders to protect Trump\u2019s longtime ally.<\/p>\n
Stone was ultimately sentenced to a little more than three years behind bars, which Trump later commuted, sparing him prison time.<\/p>\n
The Stone sentencing triggered a crisis of confidence in Barr and the Justice Department through the end of Trump\u2019s presidency, prompting hundreds of former employees to call for his resignation and to exhort active employees to report any unethical conduct or politicization of decisions.<\/p>\n
After a four-year investigation, the office of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said it found no evidence of political interference and instead blamed \u201cineffectual leadership\u201d by then-acting U.S. attorney Tim Shea of Washington, D.C., who was supervising the case and who had been on the job for two weeks.<\/p>\n
Barr, who declined to be interviewed for the inspector general\u2019s investigation, at the time denied that Trump\u2019s Twitter tirade prompted the reversal. Instead, Barr said Shea \u2014 formerly one of his closest advisers at the department \u2014 had initially signaled to him that the recommendation would be much lower. Barr said he had been \u201cvery surprised\u201d by the outcome.<\/p>\n
Horowitz\u2019s office found that \u201crather than taking the approach he discussed with Barr, and despite telling Barr that he believed the Guidelines range was unreasonable,\u201d Shea authorized line prosecutors to issue a stiffer recommendation. Barr expressed to staffers that the action was not what he and Shea had discussed and needed to be \u201cfixed,\u201d but the inspector general found that Barr\u2019s position was consistent before and after the recommendation was filed and before Trump tweeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the evidence described in this report, we concluded that the sequence of events that resulted in the Department\u2019s extraordinary step of filing a second sentencing memorandum was largely due to Shea\u2019s ineffectual leadership,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n
The report added, however, that prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky\u2019s later testimony to Congress that he and the rest of the trial team had been pressured to revise the memorandum for political reasons \u201cwas not unreasonable.\u201d It cited statements by another prosecutor and \u201cspeculative comments\u201d by a supervising prosecutor about possible political interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize that the Department\u2019s handling of the sentencing in the Stone case was highly unusual,\u201d given the participation of Trump political appointees Shea and Barr, the report stated. However, it concluded that absent any prohibition on their involvement, their actions were ultimately left up to their own \u201cdiscretion and judgment,\u201d including on how they would affect public perceptions of the department\u2019s integrity and independence.<\/p>\n
Zelinsky attorney Joshua Matz said in a statement: \u201cThe rule of law depends on prosecutors pursuing and telling the truth. My client is gratified the report confirms that he told the truth about what he saw and heard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representatives for Shea, Barr and Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Justice Department\u2019s inspector general on Wednesday blamed \u201cineffectual leadership\u201d and not political interference for the softening of Roger Stone\u2019s sentencing recommendation in February 2020 after his conviction for lying to Congress. The report upheld an account by then-Attorney General William P. Barr but also found that line prosecutors\u2019 suspicions of political meddling by President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}