Only hours ago, President Trump tweeted out his rage over the “very unfair” sentencing that prosecutors were thought to be seeking for Roger Stone, his longtime confidant.
Trump fumed that a long sentence for Stone, who had been convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress in connection with the special counsel’s investigation of Russian sabotage of the 2016 election, would constitute a “miscarriage of justice.”
By shocking coincidence, the Justice Department is now going to revise its recommendation — while telling us it had nothing whatsoever to do with the president’s command. The Post reports:
- The Justice Department plans to reduce its sentencing recommendation for longtime President Trump confidant Roger Stone, after top officials were apparently blindsided by the seven-to-nine year penalty prosecutors urged a judge to impose, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday.
- In a stunning rebuke of career prosecutors that will surely raise questions about political meddling in the case, a senior Justice Department official said the department “was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case last night.”
- “That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,” the official said. “The department finds the recommendation extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offenses. The department will clarify its position later today.”
The original sentencing recommendation had justified itself by citing the severity of Stone’s offenses — including, among other things, the fact that he tried to obstruct an investigation designed to get to the bottom of interference in our election, which “strikes at the very heart of our American democracy.”
