A federal prosecutor who was part of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation told Congress on Wednesday that Roger Stone, a close ally of Donald Trump, was given special treatment ahead of sentencing because of his relationship with the president.
“What I heard repeatedly was that Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” Aaron Zelinsky told a House judiciary committee hearing in Washington, into the Department of Justice (DoJ) under William Barr.
Zelinsky, who appeared remotely due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, said in opening remarks he was also told the acting US attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was afraid of the president.
The career DoJ prosecutor testified in front of the committee shortly after a federal appeals court said a judge could not scrutinise a Department of Justice decision to drop its case against Michael Flynn, another close Trump aide.
Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, was fired for lying about contacts with the Russian ambassador. As part of the Mueller investigation, he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Before the DoJ reversed itself and sought to drop the case, it had recommended a six-month sentence.
Stone was convicted on all seven counts of an indictment that accused him of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
He is scheduled to report to prison on 30 June, to serve a 40-month sentence, plus two year’s probation and a $20,000 fine. The 67-year-old’s lawyers are seeking a delay, citing concerns over coronavirus outbreaks in detention centers.
Trump has strongly hinted he will pardon Stone.
Wednesday’s hearing, which was subject to determined and noisy procedural objections from Republican members of the committee, was part of attempts by Democrats to hold William Barr, the attorney general, to account, in particular over what they see as the politicisation of the DoJ under his leadership.
Also appearing were Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general under George HW Bush; John Elias, a DoJ official who testified about antitrust matters under Barr; and Michael Mukasey, formerly attorney general under George W Bush.
The Democrats launched the investigation of Barr’s handling of the Stone case earlier this year and have expanded their focus to incidents including efforts to dismiss the case against Flynn and the firing of the top prosecutor in New York’s southern district. Geoffrey Berman, who was fired last weekend, had been investigating Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.
The House judiciary chair, Jerry Nadler, has threatened to subpoena Barr for a hearing next week if he does not agree to appear. The attorney general has never testified before the panel, which held him in contempt for refusing to do so last year. He had agreed to appear in March, before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered operations.
It is not clear what Democrats could do if Barr again defies a subpoena. Nadler told CNN last weekend an attempt to impeach and remove the attorney general would be a “waste of time”, because Republicans who hold the Senate would block it.
In prepared testimony released by the committee on Tuesday, Zelinsky said he was told by supervisors political considerations influenced the decision to overrule the trial team and propose a lighter prison sentence for Stone.
Zelinsky, who now works in the US attorney’s office in Maryland, was one of four lawyers who quit the Stone case after the department overruled them. In released testimony he said the acting US attorney at the time, Timothy Shea, was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the DoJ to give Stone a break.
Zelinsky did not say who was doing the pressuring, but said there was significant pressure to obscure “the correct sentencing guidelines and water down and in some cases outright distort” what happened at Stone’s trial and the events that resulted in his conviction.
DoJ leadership changed the sentencing recommendation for Stone hours after Trump tweeted his displeasure at the possibility of up to nine years in prison, saying it was too harsh.
Barr has said he ordered the new filing hours before the Trump tweet because he was caught off guard by the sentencing recommendation and believed it was excessive based on the facts of the case.
In his prepared testimony, Zelinsky described having learned from the media that the DoJ planned to overrule the trial team’s recommendation, something he said he found unusual given conventional practice of not commenting on cases.
source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/roger-stone-donald-trump-prosecutor-congress
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