Posted on 02/20/2020 5:19:12 AM PST by Kaslin
The current hysteria surrounding Attorney General William Barr's decision to intervene in the Roger Stone case and override the Draconian and wholly unjustifiable sentencing recommendation made by prosecutors on the case is hypocritical and reflects a double-standard and a misunderstanding of the Attorney General's role and authority.
Based on reports from the DOJ, the prosecutors misled their superiors about the recommendation they would make. They were part of the Mueller Special Counsel team that had a partisan agenda from start to finish. They hoped to inflict the maximum punishment on Stone for his association with the president, after failing to prove their case against the president himself.
A lead prosecutor in the case, Jeannie Rhee, served as Hillary Clinton's personal lawyer in Ms. Clinton's email scandal. The information Roger Stone was accused of trying to obtain related not to Russia, but to Hillary Clinton's conduct.
Where is the outrage about this clear conflict of interest for the prosecution? Maybe it is missing because the federal judge in the Stone case imposed an unprecedented gag order on Stone, his family, friends, and his lawyers that prohibited any of them from publicly commenting on the case, criticizing the Mueller "investigation," and from posting anything on social media about the case or Mueller.
The Attorney General is given the authority to intervene in any criminal prosecution his office brings. All DOJ prosecutors are accountable to the Attorney General. In the Stone case that is especially so. Because it was a Mueller prosecution, the Special Counsel regulations apply and under Section 600.7, the Attorney General has full ultimate authority over their conduct. He alone has the right to remove the Special Counsel and his team for misconduct or any good cause. Mr. Barr’s predecessor failed to hold the Mueller team accountable for their transgressions.
These prosecutors had a deep personal animus toward President Trump and by extension Roger Stone, and their sentencing recommendation exceeded all bounds of fairness, and could not be reconciled with statutory federal sentencing goals.
The idea that it was inappropriate or offensive for the Attorney General to intervene because these were "career prosecutors" is just plain wrong.
The prosecutors in the Senator Ted Stevens case were "career prosecutors;" yet their misconduct was so reprehensible that the federal judge presiding over the case had to set aside the conviction. The prosecutors in the Central Park Five case, the Walter McMillian death penalty case chronicled in the movie Just Mercy, in the Leo Frank case, and in the Scottsboro Boys cases were all "career prosecutors." Just imagine how those historic injustices would have been different if the state Attorneys General had intervened.
In a case I had not long ago, the "career prosecutor" blatantly lied to the U.S Court of Appeals before which we were presenting our case. It was only because the Attorney General's office actively intervened by removing the “career prosecutor” from the case and then appeared before the federal appeals court to confess the transgression by the "career prosecutor" that justice was done.
Mr. Mueller's right hand man, Andrew Weissmann, the national poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct, was a "career prosecutor." His misconduct in one series of cases in Brooklyn was so egregious that when it was exposed and a judge allowed it to come to the attention of jurors in the cases at issue, every single one of the defendants was acquitted. Two men convicted before his misconduct was exposed are still serving life sentences in prison, hanging on to hope that one day perhaps an Attorney General will intervene and right an injustice.
Apparently, a group of federal judges were so offended by the Attorney General’s intervention that they put it on their agenda to address. How about getting their own house in order before attacking the Attorney General's efforts to ensure fairness? Consider the FISA court.
For years, the FISA court knowingly ignored reports of major ethical transgressions by “career prosecutors” who obtained from that court authority for the most intrusive surveillance techniques possible. When it finally spoke out after the damage to so many lives was done, it acknowledged it in far too mild terms. What the "career prosecutors" did before the FISA court in their zeal to find something against the president and his supporters should alarm every civil libertarian and every jurist in the nation.
Instead, that outrage has been reserved for Attorney General Barr for trying to rein in rogue prosecutors whose hatred for the president and anyone associated with him, led them to vault over all bounds of reasonableness and fairness as representatives of his Department.
Attorney General Barr did nothing wrong by intervening; he did what he was obligated to do if the words from the United States Supreme Court in the landmark 1935 case of Berger v. United States are to have any real meaning:
"The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”
Two tier justice system
He’s not doing enough.
Yeah that ship sailed a couple of presidents ago.
Wasn’t this the situation that precipitated the current tweet fight between trump and Barr? That Barr won’t do anything for stone?
Skimming the article I don’t see what Barr did
My friends say ‘ohh Barr is so good.’ And ‘Trump has got to stop tweeting.’
I ask ‘what has Barr done?’ They say ‘oh. He says he’s gonna...’
I say Trump is never going to strip tweeting. And Barr is all talk.
Just like this article.
Attorney General Barr did nothing wrong by intervening; he did what he was obligated to do if the words from the United States Supreme Court in the landmark 1935 case of Berger v. United States are to have any real meaning:
“The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”
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Now if only Ultra-Obama-Judge Amy Berman Jackson had the interest that “justice shall be done”. But, of course, she doesn’t...just the opposite.
The Judge is perhaps the worst of the Obongo hacks l doubt what Barr did will even matter. Barr should expose how both Stone and Manafort ended up in this horrible woman’s court.
your problem is that you think you know what is taking place by reading the article
The author just wrote some stuff conveying the erroneous fact he knows what is really happening
He doesn’t and you don’t
Prosecutor’s sentencing recommendations are discretionary and are not binding on the court. This is more leftist hysteria over nothing!! And the DOJ resignations were likely deep staters throwing in the towel.
I don’t have a problem. The article says nothing. I never asserted I knew anything I began my statement with a question
Get off my case
95% of DOJ attorneys are Democrats, living in a city that consistently votes 90% Democrat
How could a Republican in a politically-based criminal case EVER receive a fair trial there?
What’s he supposed to do - raid the Judge’s home at O-Dark 30?
He’s sending a message and holding up on the postscript for the nonce.
“What’s he supposed to do - raid the Judge’s home at O-Dark 30?”
Indicting Comey would be a good start.
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Only one resignations was an actual resignation. The others were resignations from the case which is essentially over. Pure show.
Yeah that ship sailed a couple of presidents ago."The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”
. . . that ship will stay out of port until/unless the FBI and the rest of the Deep State DOJ and their “objective journalist” enablers are taken to the woodshed as hard as Flynn/Manafort/Stone/Popadopolus have been.The “MSM” journalism cartel must be sued for antitrust and for libel against Republicans as a class - and the Warren Court’s fake (unanimous or no) New York Times v. Sullivan decision must never be used to protect the MSM from libel action.
(Scalia said that Sullivan was bad law - adducing good reasons).
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