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Jesse Liu, the top U.S. Attorney who oversaw the prosecution of Roger Stone, a longtime political strategist and ally of President Donald Trump, resigned Wednesday after President Trump withdrew her recent nomination for a position in the Treasury Department, NBC News reported.
Days earlier, in what CNN reported as an “extraordinary move,” all four prosecutors who worked the case under Liu quit after Justice Department officials undermined their recommended sentence against Stone.
Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Michael Marando recommended a sentence of seven to nine years in prison for Stone after he was convicted on seven charges related to Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election last year, including lying to Congress and witness tampering.
Attorney General William Barr, along with other top DOJ officials, decided to reduce the prosecutors’ recommended sentence before Trump criticized their recommendation on Twitter. The president later denied any involvement in Barr’s sentencing revision. The four prosecutors, whom Trump referred to as “Mueller people” who “cut and ran” in a “horrible and very unfair situation,” withdrew one after another between submitting their own sentencing recommendation and the DOJ’s revision.
One senior Justice Department official told CNN that the resignations appeared to be a protest of their sentence recommendation being reduced by top DOJ leadership from the original seven to nine years to “far less” than what they had suggested to the judge handling the case.
Attorneys for Stone had argued that a sentence of 15 to 21 months in prison would be appropriate, while the DOJ’s reduced suggestion called the seven- to nine-year recommendation “extreme and excessive,” but declined to suggest their own length of time for Stone’s prison sentence.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, will make the final decision on Stone’s sentence on Feb. 20.
