WASHINGTON _ A federal prosecutor is expected to testify before Congress on Wednesday that he faced political pressure to go easy on President Donald Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress in its probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The bombshell allegations were made in a prepared testimony that prosecutor Aaron Zelensky is expected to deliver at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday examining alleged political interference at the Justice Department.
In the statement, made public by House Democrats, Zelensky alleges that his agency's leadership intervened to recommend a more lenient sentence for Stone, in part, because the acting U.S. attorney "was afraid of the president."
"What I heard _ repeatedly _ was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President," Zelensky wrote, adding he was told acting U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea was "receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break."
The disclosure comes as the Justice Department has been roiled by controversy over Attorney General William Barr's repeated efforts to weigh in on cases in ways that appear to benefit the president.
Just this weekend, Barr successfully removed the top federal prosecutor in New York City who has overseen politically sensitive investigations involving the president's associates. He has also pushed prosecutors to assist former national security adviser Michael Flynn to withdraw from his guilty plea for lying to federal agents about his pre-inauguration conversations with a Russian diplomat.
Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for Barr, did not immediately respond to Zelensky's allegations, nor did a spokeswoman for Shea.
Stone, 67, a self-described "dirty trickster" who has a tattoo of President Richard Nixon on his back, was convicted in November of seven felonies including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a House investigation during the probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Stone was the sixth Trump associate to be convicted of charges arising from Mueller's Russia investigation.
In his testimony, Zelensky described how he and three colleagues won the conviction and submitted a draft sentencing recommendation in February to his superiors that called for Stone to receive a sentence in the range of seven to nine years in prison. He was told the memo was strong and Stone deserved "every day" of the recommendation, Zelensky wrote.
Two days later, Zelensky wrote he was ordered to drop some of the enhancements _ essentially aggravating factors that boost a proposed punishment _prosecutors had included in their draft. The result would have reduced the sentencing range. When prosecutors resisted the pressure, he wrote, supervisors told them to recommend a sentence below the guidelines.
"We repeatedly argued that failing to seek all relevant enhancements, or recommending a below-Guidelines sentence without support for doing so, would be inappropriate," Zelensky wrote in his prepared testimony.
In response, Zelensky wrote, a supervisor told them that the "U.S. attorney had political reasons for his instructions, which our supervisor agreed were unethical and wrong. However, we were instructed that we should go along with the U.S. attorney's instructions because this case was 'not the hill worth dying on' and that we could 'lose our jobs' if we did not toe the line."
The prosecutors refused to modify the sentencing recommendation and were allowed to submit it on Feb 10. The next morning, Trump erupted on Twitter, calling the memo "horrible and very unfair."
Zelensky and his colleagues were told by their superiors that the Justice Department would soon be filing a new sentencing memo. The four prosecutors withdrew from the case. That night, a supervisor filed a new memo in federal court, arguing that the original recommendation was excessive, but said that Stone deserved prison time.
"The Department of Justice treated Roger Stone differently and more leniently in ways that are virtually, if not entire, unprecedented," Zelensky wrote.
On Feb. 20, U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson sentenced Stone to three years and four months in prison. He has not yet reported to prison; Trump has indicated he will pardon him before he is jailed.
At the sentencing, Jackson criticized how the Justice Department handled the sentencing, calling it "unprecedented" and said the original prosecutors had written a brief that had been well-researched and was supported by the facts.
