UPDATE 2-In reversal, Justice Department to seek shorter sentence for Trump adviser Stone

In a dramatic reversal that could benefit a long-time adviser to President Donald Trump, the Justice Department will seek a shorter prison sentence for veteran Republican operative Roger Stone, a U.S. official said on Tuesday, after Trump chastised prosecutors for treating Stone unfairly. The department overrode the sentencing recommendation made by federal prosecutors who secured Stone's conviction in November on seven counts of lying to the U.S. Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.

The abrupt change of course came just hours after Trump criticized the proposed sentence of seven to nine years as a "miscarriage of justice." "This is a horrible and very unfair situation," the Republican president wrote on Twitter early on Tuesday about Stone, a friend of his for decades.

Stone's trial arose from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that detailed extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election to benefit Trump's candidacy. After the department's action was disclosed, federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who helped prosecute Stone and worked on the Mueller investigation, told a federal court he is withdrawing from the case. He remains employed as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.

The department did not announce the new sentence it will recommend. Legal experts described the move as highly unusual, and Democrats accused the Justice Department, headed by Trump political loyalist William Barr, of working to protect Trump's political interests.

"They are turning us into a banana republic," Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Twitter. Stone, who has labeled himself a "dirty trickster" and "agent provocateur" and famously has the face of former President Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, faces a Feb. 20 sentencing before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

In a court filing on Monday, prosecutors said their proposed sentence fell within U.S. guidelines and would "accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law." That came as a surprise to senior Justice Department officials who were expecting prosecutors to ask for a lower range, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Justice Department has not been in touch with the White House over the matter, the official said.

Legal experts said it would be unusual for prosecutors to change their proposed sentence after filing a formal recommendation to the court, especially on a high-profile case like this in which senior Justice Department officials as well as courtroom prosecutors are involved in the decision-making. Several said that the proposed sentence struck them as unusually severe. Stone's defense team, in a filing late on Monday, disputed the prosecution's calculation and proposed a range of between 15 and 21 months. They asked the judge for a sentence that would fall below that range.

"It is high, but the prosecutors obviously felt there were extenuating circumstances that justified the enhancements," said Lynn Niels, a former federal prosecutor. Stone is one of several Trump associates charged with crimes as part of Mueller's investigation that detailed a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda in the 2016 election and extensive contacts between the president's campaign and Moscow. Stone was one of only two of these Trump associates who went to trial rather than pleading guilty.

Trump has the power to pardon people for federal crimes, although he has yet to use it in the cases of other former aides convicted in the wake of the Mueller investigations. "We look forward to reviewing the government's supplemental filing," Stone's lawyer, Grant Smith, said in an email to Reuters.

 

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