After the stunning news that the Justice Department will scale back a sentencing recommendation filed by prosecutors who led the Roger Stone case, four of those prosecutors withdrew from the case, with one of them resigning from the Justice Department entirely.
In a notice to the court that he was withdrawing from Stone’s case, prosecutor Jonathan Kravis told the court he was resigning from his role as Assistant U.S. attorney.
Two other prosecutors who announced their withdrawal from Stone’s case, Adam Jed and Aaron Zelinsky, were both members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Michael Marando, another federal prosecutor assigned to the case, withdrew without resigning from the Justice Department as well.
Zelinksy’s withdrawal notice said he was resigning from his role in the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. — which took over the prosecution of Stone when Mueller’s shop shut down — but Zelinksy is reportedly retaining his position at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Maryland.
Several of the withdrawal notices came even before the Justice Department filed its amended sentencing recommendation for Stone, who is slated to be sentenced later this month.
A senior DOJ official earlier Tuesday told several media outlets that the Department was going to “clarify” the recommendation because the sentencing memo filed Monday was “extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate to Mr. Stone’s offenses.”
Trump tweeted angrily overnight about Monday’s memo, but the DOJ official reportedly claimed that the decision to amend the recommendation was made before Trump’s outburst.
By the end of the day Tuesday, every prosecutor who had signed Monday’s sentencing memo — with the exception of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Timothy Shea, who only stepped into that role late last month — had withdrawn from the case.
For the Department of Justice to so publicly and sloppily override the sentencing recommendation was extraordinary and shocking, former DOJ officials told TPM.
One less person Barr and Trump have to fire.
Next!
Dammit, we have to put an end to this shit.
ETA: Re-read this and the footnote to the Notice of Withdrawal. “Zelinsky, who was designated a special assistant U.S. attorney in DC, is reportedly retaining his position as an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore.”
That’s what he thinks. He was part of Mueller’s team. Gotta fire him now.
So another “relocation”?
Getting to be a habit.
That’s actually huge, you don’t see something like that happen. He obviously resigned in protest at being forced to withdraw the sentencing recommendation; doing it that openly is waving the red flag at what is happening here. Good on him for resigning that openly and indicating to the rest of us how outrageous this interference is. The sad thing is that there are plenty of attorneys who will go along with this stuff, they will quickly find their next person to go forward with the plan to get Stone off.
It’s always a question of when it will be enough…the Republicans went nuts when Bill Clinton had a conversation with the AG, but their AG pulling all of this stuff is just fine, which shows they are a lost cause when it comes to justice for all. Whoever is going to be the Democratic candidate needs to point this stuff out, the corruption of our justice system (from judges to the DOJ to ICE, BP, and police) is a huge issue and it has to be fixed if we’re ever going to feel like the system is fair again.
Rachel noted last night that Zelinsky had been taken off the pleadings in the Flynn case. More of the Trump/Barr reward our friends/revenge against our enemies plan at work.
Things the Republicans USED to be-