Justice Dept. Officials Testify on Politicization Under Barr.
'Lawmakers are hearing from career officials who say that politics drove decisions on the sentencing of a presidential ally and on antitrust actions.
Two Justice Department officials delivered stinging congressional testimony on Wednesday, accusing political appointees of intervening in criminal and antitrust cases to serve the personal interests of President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.
Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, a career prosecutor who worked on the Russia investigation, told the House Judiciary Committee that senior law enforcement officials intervened to seek a more lenient prison sentence for Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. for political reasons. And John W. Elias, a senior career official in the antitrust division, charged that supervisors improperly used their powers to investigate the marijuana industry and a deal between California and four major automakers.
It was highly unusual for current officials to testify before Congress and criticize department leadership. Democrats say the hearing is part of a broader investigation into Mr. Barr’s leadership of the department — work that has taken on added relevance in recent days, after Mr. Trump agreed to fire the federal prosecutor in Manhattan who has led several investigations into his associates.
A department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, pushed back on Mr. Zelinsky’s account, saying that Mr. Barr determined that the sentencing recommendation for Mr. Stone was “excessive and inconsistent with similar cases.” She added that Mr. Zelinsky’s testimony was “based on his own interpretation of events and hearsay (at best), not firsthand knowledge.”
Donald Ayer, who was deputy attorney general under President George Bush before he was ousted and replaced by Mr. Barr in that role in 1990, also testified, saying that the actions alleged by the whistle-blowers “are totally undermining public trust in the system.”
“We’re on the way to something far worse than Watergate,” said Mr. Ayer, who has been among Mr. Barr’s sharpest critics. “It’s becoming very transparent many things are being done essentially for reasons that are completely unrelated to the merits of the case.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/politics/justice-department-politicization.html?
