'Livid and Frightened': Inside the DOJ Office at the Center of the Roger Stone Scandal [View all]

[babylonsister]

February 13, 2020 3:44PM ET
‘Livid and Frightened’: Inside the DOJ Office at the Center of the Roger Stone Scandal
Government prosecutors are angry and looking for the exits after a political appointee intervened to give Trump crony Roger Stone a lighter sentence.
By Andy Kroll

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The Justice Department has denied that Barr acted at the direction of Trump to lighten Stone’s punishment, but the sequence of events is damning all the same. It appears as if the DOJ rebuked its own lawyers to go easy on a longtime friend of the president’s. A department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The morale of DOJ’s thousands of prosecutors is no small matter. These lawyers work on the front lines of protecting the rule of law. Disillusionment and frustration among this corps of attorneys has real-world consequences for the fair application of justice across the country.

Channing Phillips, who served in the Justice Department for nearly three decades and led the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. under Republican and Democratic presidents, including Donald Trump, tells Rolling Stone that he never witnessed a series of events during his time in public service comparable to what happened in the Stone case.

“I found the whole sequence of events deeply disturbing,” Phillips says. “I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope never to see anything like it again.”

Phillips says morale in the office “took a huge hit” this week based on the conversations he’s had. He said that Jonathan Kravis, the federal prosecutor who worked the Stone case and quit the DOJ after his recommendation was reversed, was well-respected and seen as a loyal public servant. “When you work in the trenches like we do, we feel each other’s pain, and so to see someone give up a career that they care about …” Phillips says. “On the other hand, these guys [who withdrew from the case or resigned] should be looked at as heroes, because when they took the job they took an oath, and clearly from where I sit they weren’t willing to sacrifice that oath. Kudos to them for doing that.”

Another former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C., who requested anonymity to share responses from old colleagues still working there, says lawyers are “livid and frightened” after the events of this week.

“Some are just trying to fly under the radar,” the former prosecutor tells Rolling Stone. “All are looking for jobs outside of the government, but many don’t have the time in to leave. I really never have seen anything like this.”

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/roger-stone-justice-department-bill-barr-mueller-952563/