President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Due to what transpired during the trial, House Judiciary Committee Chairperson Jerry Nadler has now demanded Attorney General William “Bill” Barr to provide all the information from the Stone case.
Politicalflare reports that Nadler sent Barr a letter demanding that he turn in any and all of the messages from Trump sent him regarding Stone’s sentencing. Stone was charged for witness tampering, obstruction of official proceedings, and false statements to Congress and was pleaded guilty to all. In Nadler’s demand, he asked Barr to “make available for interview 15 different current and former officials” including the four prosecutors who stepped down from the case – Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Jonathan Kravis, and Michael Marando after the Department of Justice interfered and asked for a shorter sentence for Stone.
But that is not the only case Nadler wanted to probe into, because he also demanded all the communication from the Michael Flynn case as well as Paul Manafort, due to outside interference by the Justice Department. Should Nadler present the four prosecutors with subpoenas, the situation will be similar to the Ukraine scandal that triggered the impeachment trials from the past months in 2019 and a little into January 2020. Barr could order them not to appear, but the prosecutors may well defy Barr’s orders and testify anyway.
Aside from these high-profile cases, Nadler also requested a list of all the times the Department of Justice had interfered with the sentencing of individuals over the past decade. The Justice Department’s recent interferences regarding the sentencing of certain individuals prompted Nadler to send Barr the demand. While Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee by the 31st of March, Nadler asked for his response by the 13th of March.
The original four prosecutors in the Stone case demanded a prison sentence of seven to nine years. However, coinciding with Trump’s twitter rants regarding the trial, he also requested an amendment of Stone’s prison sentence, asking for a shorter term, which prompted the four prosecutors to leave.