Fear of Trump Led to Reversal on Stone Sentencing Memo, Prosecutor Says

 The federal office that led the prosecution of President Donald Trump’s friend Roger Stone received “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice” to ease its sentencing recommendation, career prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky plans to tell Congress, according to his prepared remarks.Zelinsky, who withdrew from the Roger Stone case in protest, will testify on Wednesday before the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives Judiciary Committee about political pressures that he said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia faced.He will add that Tim Shea, the acting U.S. attorney at the time who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, ultimately caved into the pressure because he was “afraid of the President.”Zelinsky’s testimony never explicitly says who pressured Shea, but he said he was told that Shea “was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break.””I was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the U.S. Attorney was ‘afraid of the President,'” Zelinsky said.Republicans are expected to push back on his testimony, saying he is confusing politicization with policy disagreements.Zelinsky said career prosecutors never got to see the draft of the revised memo, which Shea filed after Trump blasted the office on Twitter for its original recommendation of a seven-to-nine-year term.The Republican president called the recommendation “horrible” and a “miscarriage of justice.” Stone’s friendshipwith Trump dates back decades.Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that Zelinsky had not had any discussion about the sentencing with Barr or other members of the department’s political leadership and his allegations were based on his own interpretation and hearsay.Barr had not discussed Stone’s sentencing with Trump or anyone else at the White House, and had made the decision to revise the filing before Trump’s tweet, Kupec said.Stone, 67, who was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is due to report to prison later this month to begin serving his three years-and-four-month sentence. He is seeking an extension due to concerns about contracting COVID-19.
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