Last October marked the the 46th anniversary of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, a pivotal turning point in the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation. It happened when Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order (to suppress the Watergate Investigation), along with his deputy, assistant attorney general, William Ruckelshaus who was summarily fired by Nixon when he refused to carry out the order.
Of course the craven Bill Barr is no Elliot Richardson. More like his polar opposite.
Trump tweeted early Tuesday, calling the initial sentencing recommendation "disgraceful" and a "miscarriage of justice."
By Dartunorro Clark, Michael Kosnar, Dareh Gregorian and Tom Winter
The prosecution team in Roger Stone's criminal case abruptly resigned from the case on Tuesday after the Justice Department said it planned to reduce the recommended sentence for the longtime Trump associate.
The Justice Department on Tuesday said it was pulling back on its request to sentence Stone to seven to nine years in prison after President Donald Trump blasted the sentencing proposal as "a miscarriage of justice."
The revised recommendation doesn't ask for a particular sentence but says the one that was recommended earlier "does not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter" and that the actual sentence should be "far less."
It urges the judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson, to consider Stone’s “advanced age, health, person circumstances, and lack of criminal history in fashioning an appropriate sentence.”
"The defendant committed serious offenses and deserves a sentence of incarceration," but based "on the facts known to the government, a sentence of between 87 to 108 months’ imprisonment, however, could be considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances. Ultimately, the government defers to the Court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case," the filing said.
After reports that a softer sentencing recommendation was imminent, lead prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky withdrew as a prosecutor in the case. A footnote in his court filing noted that "the undersigned attorney has resigned effective immediately.”
The damage to the DOJ’s reputation for fairness is serious, and getting worse by the hour. When I started writing this it was three prosecutors who had resigned, not four.
By Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett, Ann E. Marimow and Spencer S. Hsu
All four career prosecutors handling the case against Roger Stone, a confidant of President Trump, asked to withdraw from the legal proceedings Tuesday — and one quit his job entirely — after the Justice Department signaled it planned to reduce their sentencing recommendation for the president’s friend.
Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors, wrote in a court filing he had resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving government altogether. Three others — Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Adam Jed and Michael Marando — asked a judge’s permission to leave the case.
Zelinsky, a former member of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, also indicated in a filing he was quitting his special assignment to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, though a spokeswoman said he will remain an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore.
None provided a reason for their decisions.
The departures come just hours after a senior Justice Department official told reporters that the agency’s leadership had been “shocked” by the seven-to-nine-year penalty prosecutors asked a judge to impose on Stone and intended to ask for a lesser penalty.