The Justice Department did not unduly pressure federal prosecutors to reduce sentencing recommendations for Trump ally Roger Stone despite his “highly unusual” handling of the situation, a surveillance report released Wednesday, he said.
Stone was convicted in 2019 of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tilt the 2016 election in his favor.
Federal prosecutors initially recommended between seven and nine years in prison for Trump’s longtime confidant in early 2020, but DOJ leaders overruled them and asked for less time in a rare second request. The team of four prosecutors who put Stone on trial and recommended the original sentence resigned after their recommendations were overturned.
Questions arose about whether the department, then led by former Attorney General Bill Barr, had exerted undue pressure to reduce Stone’s sentence because of his relationship with the then-president. Before the Justice Department formally changed its sentencing stance, Trump blasted the original recommendation as “very horrible and unfair” on Twitter, now X.
But now, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General says its four-year investigation into the matter has produced “no evidence” that DOJ leadership engaged in misconduct or violated any department policy regarding to Stone’s sentence.
According to the report, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia was already involved in “extensive discussions” about Stone’s sentence when Acting U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea engaged Barr in a conversation about the matter and they determined that a sentence below federal guidelines would vary. would be appropriate.
However, Shea later authorized the presentation of prosecutors’ memo recommending a sentence “consistent with” the guidelines. The DOJ OIG investigation produced evidence that when Barr learned the memo was inconsistent with what he and Shea had previously discussed, he “immediately” suggested it needed to be “fixed” — hours before Trump tweeted it.
Barr was “in the middle” of hearing others’ opinions on a second request when Trump’s tweets were mentioned and “the air nearly left the room,” the report says, citing an interview with the then-chief attorney general. team, Brian Rabbitt.
“Based on the evidence described in this report, we conclude that the sequence of
events that resulted in the Department’s extraordinary step of presenting a second sentence
memo was largely due to Shea’s ineffective leadership,” the report says.
At the time, one of the federal prosecutors who resigned over the matter, Aaron Zelinsky, testified before Congress that Stone received preferential treatment because of his relationship with the president. The DOJ OIG determined that he did not provide false testimony, despite the watchdog’s findings that there was insufficient evidence to establish “improper political consideration or influence.”
“We found that Prosecutor 2’s belief that he (and the rest of the trial team) had been pressured to review the memo for political reasons was not unreasonable,” the report said.
The DOJ’s enforcement arm interviewed 24 current and former lawyers and department officials over the course of its investigation, including Shea, Rabbitt, Zelinsky and two other prosecutors on the Stone team. Barr refused to participate.
Stone was ultimately sentenced to 40 months in prison, but his sentence was commuted by Trump just days before he was to begin serving his sentence.
The Associated Press contributed.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
