All four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case withdrew from their roles after the Justice Department reversed course in seeking a lengthy prison sentence for the Republican operative.
The officials, three of whom were members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating a possible criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, left after President Trump condemned the original sentencing recommendation of up to nine years in prison.
Addressing reporters Tuesday evening outside the White House, Trump denied that he played a role in the decision by the Justice Department to lower its sentencing recommendation for Stone. “I would be able to do it if I wanted, I have the absolute right to do it. I stay out of things to a degree that people wouldn’t believe. But I didn’t speak to them,” Trump said. “I thought the recommendation was ridiculous. I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.”
The exodus began with a brief court filing on Tuesday afternoon with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, showing Aaron Zelinsky resigned “effective immediately” from his appointment as a special assistant U.S. attorney in D.C. working on the Stone case. Zelinsky is an assistant federal prosecutor from Maryland who was on loan in D.C. with Mueller’s team.
Two other former Mueller prosecutors followed: Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kravis told the court in a subsequent filing he resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney “and therefore no longer represents the government in this matter.” Adam Jed, a special assistant U.S. attorney, then notified the court that he was withdrawing from the case. It does not appear that Jed resigned from the Justice Department.
Michael Marando, an assistant U.S. attorney with the D.C. office who was not part of Mueller’s team, also filed a notice of withdrawal from the Stone case.
Prosecutors on Monday filed a motion recommending that Stone, who was found guilty of witness tampering and lying to Congress, be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. That recommendation was met with criticism from Trump, who called the situation “horrible and very unfair” early Tuesday morning.
Hours later, the Justice Department rebuked the career prosecutors behind the recommendation and in a subsequent filing suggested scaling back the sentencing request to three to four years in prison would be more appropriate.
Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who took over as lead counsel from U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu a couple weeks ago, so far remains on the case, even after signing off on the tougher sentencing recommendation for Stone on Monday.
Liu was nominated by Trump to be the undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes at the Treasury Department, where she will likely now face an unexpectedly newsworthy confirmation hearing this Thursday. She also led the the Justice Department’s prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn until recently.
Stone, a 67-year-old former associate of Trump and self-styled “dirty trickster,” was charged and convicted for his actions during and after the 2016 presidential election. Stone was found guilty of five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee and two charges of obstructing a congressional investigation and intimidating a witness. The trial focused on Stone’s claims about his self-declared communications with WikiLeaks, which apparently did not happen.
“This conduct was part of an effort to hide from Congress and to craft a false narrative about Stone’s conduct in 2016,” prosecutors said on Monday. “Stone regularly communicated with senior Trump campaign officials, including deputy campaign chairman Richard Gates and campaign CEO Steve Bannon, about WikiLeaks’s plans to release more information that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign. Both Gates and Bannon believed that Stone was providing them with nonpublic information about WikiLeaks’s plans. Indeed, Bannon viewed Stone as the Trump campaign’s access point to WikiLeaks.”
During the two-week trial, it was never alleged Stone was in communication with anyone from WikiLeaks, and he was never accused by prosecutors of criminally conspiring with Russia or any other foreign actors.
“In the end, the investigations yielded no evidence of the involvement of any American with the Russian government or any agent operating on its behalf to interfere in the 2016 election,” Stone’s defense team said. “It is also undisputed that Roger Stone had nothing to do with obtaining the compromised emails or providing them to WikiLeaks. The information that Stone failed to provide to HPSCI was insignificant in the broader context of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
Judge Amy Jackson, the Obama appointee who presided over Stone’s trial, will hand down his sentence on Feb. 20.
[Related: Democrats say they’ll investigate Roger Stone reduced sentence]
