DOJ watchdog finds no improper pressure on prosecutors to lower Roger Stone sentence

The Justice Department did not improperly pressure federal prosecutors to reduce sentencing recommendations for Trump ally Roger Stone, despite its "highly unusual" handling of the situation, a watchdog report released Wednesday said.

Stone was in 2019 convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election in their favor.

Federal prosecutors initially recommended between seven and nine years in prison for the longtime Trump confidant in early 2020, but DOJ leaders overruled them and sought less time in a rare second filing. The team of four prosecutors that took Stone to trial and recommended the original sentence resigned after their recommendations were countermanded.

Questions swirled over whether the department, led then by former Attorney General Bill Barr, had exerted improper pressure to lower Stone's sentence due to his relationship with the then-president. Before the Justice Department formally changed its sentencing stance, Trump had blasted the original recommendation as "very horrible and unfair" on Twitter, now X.

But now, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General says that its four-year investigation into the matter yielded "no evidence" that DOJ leadership engaged in misconduct or violated any department policy in connection with the Stone sentencing.

According to the report, the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia was already engaged in "extensive discussions" about Stone's sentence when interim U.S. attorney Timothy Shea engaged Barr in a conversation about the matter and they determined that a sentence below the federal guidelines range would be appropriate.

However, Shea later authorized the filing of the prosecutors' memo recommending a sentence "consistent with" the guidelines range. The DOJ OIG's investigation produced evidence that when Barr learned the memo was inconsistent with what he and Shea previously discussed, he "immediately" suggested it needed to be "fixed" — hours before Trump tweeted.

Barr had been "in the middle" of listening to others' views on a second filing when Trump's tweets were mentioned and "the air almost went out of the room," the report says, citing an interview with the then-attorney general's chief of staff, Brian Rabbitt.

"Based on the evidence described in this report, we concluded that the sequence of
events that resulted in the Department’s extraordinary step of filing a second sentencing
memorandum was largely due to Shea’s ineffectual leadership," the report reads.

At the time, one of the federal prosecutors who resigned over the matter, Aaron Zelinsky, testified before Congress that Stone received preferential treatment because of his relationship with the president. The DOJ OIG determined that he did not provide false testimony, despite the watchdog's findings that there was not sufficient evidence to establish "improper political considerations or influence."

"We found that Prosecutor 2’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 read.

The DOJ watchdog arm interviewed 24 current and former department attorneys and officials throughout the course of its investigation, including Shea, Rabbitt, Zelinsky and two other prosecutors on the Stone team. Barr declined to participate.

Stone was ultimately sentenced to 40 months in prison, but his sentence was commuted by Trump just days before he was scheduled to begin serving the time.

The Associated Press contributed.