Ahead of the Congressional hearing before Congress, Ex-Prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky publicizes his position that he felt that the sentencing for Roger Stone was to be altered because of pressure from DOJ and ultimately the WH.
Senior law enforcement officials intervened to seek a more lenient prison sentence for President Trump’s friend and ally Roger J. Stone Jr. for political reasons, a former prosecutor on the case is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday, citing his immediate supervisors’s account of the matter.
“What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” said the prosecutor, Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, in a written opening statement submitted on Tuesday to the House Judiciary Committee ahead of Wednesday’s hearing. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Zelinksy will say that a supervisor working on the case told him there were “political reasons” to shorten prosecutors’ initial sentencing guidelines and that the supervisor agreed that doing so “was unethical and wrong.” Mr. Zelinksy said he and his fellow prosecutors raised concerns in writing and in conversation, but his “objections were not heeded.”
Mr. Zelinsky did not say in his written statement whom he was referring to. Attorney General William P. Barr directed the intervention days after he maneuvered the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie K. Liu, out of her role and installed in her place as acting U.S. attorney a close aide from his own office, Timothy Shea.
Mr. Zelinsky plans to say that he was told that Mr. Shea “was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break” and complied because he was “afraid of the president.” Mr. Zelinsky is expected to testify that he and other line prosecutors were told the case was “not the hill worth dying on” and that they could lose their jobs if they did not fall in line.
A Justice Department spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Mr. Zelinsky and three fellow prosecutors ultimately withdrew from the case in protest, after department officials overrode their recommendation that Mr. Stone receive seven to nine years in prison, in line with standard guidelines. The officials submitted a new, more lenient recommendation to the judge meting out Mr. Stone’s punishment.
Mr. Zelinsky, a prosecutor in Baltimore, had been detailed to Washington to continue work on the Stone case that was begun while he worked for Mr. Mueller. While Mr. Zelinksy worked on the case while he was assigned to the Washington office, he never met with Mr. Shea or discussed the case with him, according to two people familiar with internal conversations about the Stone case.
Mr. Stone was convicted of seven felonies committee in an effort to impede a congressional inquiry that threatened Mr. Trump. He was sentenced in February to 40 months in prison and is due to report at the end of this month, although he has said he is seeking a delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
[In Bad Faith], Rep. Gohmert “Gavels” Down Witness
