More than 1,000 former U.S Justice Department officials have condemned strange move from the Attorney General William Bar regarding Donald Trump’s convicted friend, Roger Stone. They called for William Bar to resign because his actions follow those of dictatorships. The group of former Justice Officials was referring to Barr stepping in to overrule prosecutors who decided to suggest a federal judge hand Stone a 9-year sentence for lying to U.S Congress and obstructing a federal investigation. It is noteworthy that Trump tweeted such a sentence would represent a miscarriage of justice. A number of legal experts and Democratic legislators have warned Trump’s actions are his latest attempt following his acquittal on two impeachment articles to use the powers of his office in more expansive ways.
The former Justice Department Officials wrote in a statement released on Sunday. The statement says, “Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions. It is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case”. The group has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations and said, “It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court”.
Protect Democracy group is a bipartisan organization that randomly criticizes the Trump administration. The group says, “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics, they are dictatorships”. Barr said, “To have public statements and tweets made about the department, about our people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department, and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity”.