Tag: Barr wants Trump to be a king

Stone received ‘favorable treatment’ because of relationship with Trump, former prosecutor will testify

The Hill logoA former prosecutor who worked on the Roger Stone case is expected to testify Wednesday that top officials at the Justice Department (DOJ) intervened on behalf of President Trump to help his longtime friend receive a lighter sentence.

Aaron Zelinsky, who is slated to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, will allege that Stone received more favorable treatment as a result of his relationship with 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,” Zelinsky wrote in an opening statement released by the panel in advance of the hearing. Continue reading.

Bill Barr has thrown DOJ into a tailspin — and prosecutors have felt ‘under siege’ for months: report

AlterNet logoThe first thing federal prosecutors working on Roger Stone’s case heard from their new boss, a Bill Barr loyalist, was that he wanted the sentencing recommendation for Stone weakened. It was Timothy Shea’s first day on the job after being installed as the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, and the Stone prosecutors, just days away from filing their sentencing recommendation, felt “under siege,” according to The New York Times.

Shortly after those prosecutors recommended 7 to 9 years for Stone’s conviction on seven felony counts, Attorney General Barr himself would intervene in the case as Donald Trump groused on Twitter, decrying the recommendation as a “miscarriage of justice.” A day later, all four prosecutors, led by Aaron Zelinsky, quit the case.

But strains between the 600-person office and the Department of Justice began to emerge as far back as last summer during an effort to charge one of Trump’s favorite political enemies, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, with lying to investigators. After Shea’s predecessor, Jessie Liu, tried and failed to secure a grand jury indictment in the McCabe case, her relationship with Barr reportedly soured. Continue reading.