Donald Trump and his team tend to hold Justice Department officials in low regard, though it’s likely the Republican was pleased with the latest findings from the DOJ’s inspector general’s office. The Associated Press reported:
A Justice Department watchdog investigation found no evidence that politics played an improper role in a decision to propose a lighter prison sentence for Roger Stone, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, according to a report released Wednesday.
It’s been several years since we last talked about this, so let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review.For most of the process, Stone’s prosecution seemed rather routine. The longtime Republican operative and close Trump associate was charged with multiple felonies, given a fair trial, convicted by a jury, and was prepared for sentencing. Federal prosecutors recommended a sentence that was in line with existing guidelines and made their case to a judge, in writing, defending their rationale. All of this unfolded exactly as it was supposed to.
But after the then-president condemned the prosecutors’ filing via social media — a bizarre development in its own right — the Justice Department intervened and declared that it was withdrawing the recommended sentence. Soon after, four prosecutors announced their resignations.
David Laufman, a former counterintelligence chief at the Justice Department, called the developments “shocking,” adding, “We are now truly at a break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment” for the DOJ. Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, wrote in a message to career employees at the department, “This is not what you signed up for. The four prosecutors who bailed on the Stone case have shown the way.”
Aaron Zelinsky, one of the four federal prosecutors who resigned, later told Congress, “I have never seen political influence play a role in prosecutorial decision making, with one exception: United States v. Roger Stone.” Zelinsky went on to allege that Trump’s Justice Department exerted political pressure on prosecutors to “water down and in some cases outright distort” the nature of Stone’s conduct.








