No evidence Trump influenced Roger Stone sentencing: DOJ watchdog

There is no evidence that then-President Donald Trump forced Attorney General Bill Barr in 2020 to diminish sentencing for longtime adviser Roger Stone, a Justice Department watchdog revealed on Wednesday.

According to DOJ Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, there was a significant lack of evidence that Barr’s decision to undo prosecutors’ heightened sentencing recommendation for Stone was influenced by Trump’s own criticism of their previous stringent recommendation on Twitter, before it became known as X.

“No law, rule, regulation or DOJ policy, including those related to conflicts or ethics prohibited Barr’s participation in the Stone sentencing and, therefore, the decision whether to participate was ultimately a discretionary one left to the judgment of the Attorney General,” Horowitz wrote in the 85-page report made public Wednesday by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General.

In November 2019, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., convicted Stone on seven criminal counts, including lying under oath to Congress and obstructing a House investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election, an allegation that was fueled by a salacious dossier composed by anti-Trump partisan interests and ultimately debunked.

Federal prosecutors originally sought between seven and nine years in prison for Stone in early 2020, but top-level personnel within the DOJ overruled them and sought less time in a rare filing. The team of four prosecutors who recommended the original sentence resigned after their recommendations were shot down, despite the OIG report finding “it was within the Attorney General’s discretion to correct what he viewed as an unjust submission.”

According to the report, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia had been involved in “extensive discussions” regarding Stone’s sentencing. During this period, interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea consulted with Barr, and they agreed that a sentence below the federal guidelines would be suitable.

Before Shea reached out to Barr, the attorney general had no involvement in Stone’s case. Barr also learned from media reports that prosecutors had recommended a sentence that was inconsistent with what Shea told him previously in the day, according to the watchdog report.

Despite this discrepancy, Shea later approved the prosecutors’ memo, which recommended a sentence aligning with the guidelines. The inspector general’s investigation revealed that when Barr found out the memo did not reflect his prior discussion with Shea, he “immediately” insisted it needed to be “corrected,” which happened hours before Trump’s tweet.

The new report is perhaps even more damning for the prosecutors who resigned. One of the four prosecutors, Aaron Zelinsky, had testified before Congress that Stone received preferential treatment. The only reason why the IG did not conclude Zelinsky gave false testimony was due to speculative comments made by one of the other four prosecutors.

“As a result, we found that [Zelinsky’s] belief that he (and the rest of the trial team) had been pressured to revise the memorandum for political reasons was not unreasonable,” the report stated.

Stone was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison, but Trump commuted his sentence in 2020 before Stone was told to report to prison. Trump pardoned Stone in December 2020.

The DOJ watchdog interviewed 24 current and former department attorneys throughout the investigation, including Shea and Zelinsky. Barr declined to participate in the interview process.