Deconstructing America

For decades after Watergate, the White House treated the Justice Department with the softest of gloves, fearful that any appearance of political interference would resurrect the specter of Attorney General John Mitchell helping President Richard M. Nixon carry out a criminal conspiracy for political ends.

[...]

Trump’s ground-shaking conduct has demolished those once-sacrosanct guardrails. Mr. Barr’s intervention to lessen a prison sentencing recommendation for the president’s convicted friend Roger J. Stone Jr. prompted all four career prosecutors handling the matter to quit the case.

To career prosecutors around the country, the Stone case raised new fears of what is to come. Until now, according to conversations with more than a dozen career lawyers in some of the 93 U.S. attorney’s offices, they had watched other divisions in the Justice Department execute significant shifts in response to Mr. Trump while the work of prosecuting crimes was largely unaffected by the politics of the moment. Now career prosecutors said they worried they might face more pressure.

  NYT

I think you can guarantee it.

Prosecutors across the United States, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, said this week that they had already been wary of working on any case that might catch Mr. Trump’s attention and that the Stone episode only deepened their concern. They also said that they were worried that Mr. Barr might not support them in politically charged cases.

I think you can guarantee that, too.

For the most part, modern presidents have stayed away from cases involving their friends or associates, at least publicly. If they weighed in, it usually came in the form of clemency shortly before leaving office, as when Mr. Bush pardoned former Reagan administration colleagues caught up in the Iran-contra scandal or when President Bill Clinton pardoned his half brother and his former business partner.

One notable exception was President Barack Obama, who during the 2016 presidential campaign said that he did not believe that Hillary Clinton had harmed national security by using a private email server but was guilty only of carelessness — remarks that Republicans immediately criticized as interference with an open F.B.I. investigation.

And they were right.

Mr. Trump’s allies have said he has every right as the head of the executive branch to oversee investigations, even those in which he has a personal interest, and that he is trying to correct the political excesses of a law enforcement system he sees as biased against him and his team. They point most often to the mishandling of a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a onetime Trump campaign adviser, which an independent investigation criticized.

[...]

The main focus of the president’s effort to mix politics and prosecutions has been the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which traditionally oversees many delicate political prosecutions, including national security, espionage and political corruption cases. Until recently, the U.S. attorney for Washington was Jessie K. Liu, who oversaw Mr. Stone’s prosecution, but Mr. Barr maneuvered to get her out of that position and install a longtime close aide in her place a few weeks before the sentencing.

[...]

Some conservatives have viewed Ms. Liu, a Trump appointee who worked in the Justice Department in the second Bush administration, with suspicion. When she was nominated last year to be associate attorney general, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, protested because she had been associated with the National Association of Women Lawyers, a group that opposed the confirmation of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court in 2006. (Mr. Lee is a former Alito clerk.) Actually, Ms. Liu had signed a petition in support of Mr. Alito’s confirmation, but Mr. Trump withdrew her nomination, anyway.

[...]

When it became clear that Ms. Liu would not stay until she was confirmed, it raised suspicions among some in the U.S. attorney’s office. Those were only compounded in late January when Mr. Barr designated Timothy Shea, a longtime trusted adviser, as her temporary successor rather than letting her top assistant serve as caretaker.

Mr. Shea arrived on Feb. 3 with David Metcalf, another perceived Barr loyalist, to serve essentially as his chief of staff. Mr. Metcalf immediately caused discord when he moved a prosecutor from her office so that he could work adjacent to Mr. Shea, according to two people familiar with the move.

[...]

One week later, they faced a dilemma when the four career prosecutors working on the Stone case proposed recommending a sentence of seven to nine years, in line with nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines.

On Monday, several people familiar with the matter said, Mr. Shea told the prosecutors that he wanted a lower sentence, reminding them that they had discretion to deviate from the guidelines. But three of the four prosecutors threatened to quit the case, so Mr. Shea acquiesced until Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, overruled him on Tuesday.

[...]

Soon after he was sworn in last February, Mr. Barr inserted himself into politically charged investigations, seeking information in particular from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan about cases involving the administration, according to people briefed on the matter. His interest was not unheard-of; prosecutors typically update Washington about high-profile cases.

[...]

At one point during discussions about the scope of campaign finance laws, Mr. Barr essentially questioned the legal theory behind [Trump lawyer Michael] Cohen’s case, one of the people said. He also questioned whether such cases could be prosecuted civilly, rather than criminally.

[...]

The Washington office is grappling with a number of other politically charged cases, including investigations into whether the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey leaked classified information to reporters, and whether his former deputy Andrew G. McCabe misled an inspector general. The office is also handling the sentencing of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.

If people of conscience continue to resign - as they should - I wonder how a Democratic president - should we get one some day - will manage to rebuild the agencies and offices Trump has turned into his personal den of thieves.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.