Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, issued a dire warning Tuesday on the allegation that officials at the “highest levels” of the Dept. of Justice pressured prosecutors to ask for an extremely light sentence for Roger Stone, a good friend and former associate of President Donald Trump.
“America is on the brink of total destruction,” Shaub warned on Twitter.
And he put his warning in context.
“Short of assassinating opponents or using the military to quell public protests, I can’t think of a form of corruption worse than a nation’s leader influencing the administration of justice to protect friends and prosecute enemies.”
Shaub was responding to a tweet from attorney, commentator, and writer for Yahoo News and Just Security, Luppe Luppen, who posted a copy of Assistant United States Attorney Aaron Zelinsky’s opening statement. Zelinsky was a prosecutor for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He is set to testify before Congress Wednesday as a whistleblower, presumably against the DOJ and Attorney General Bill Barr.
Zelinsky was one of four prosecutors on the Roger Stone case who abruptly withdrew just before the sentencing recommendation was to be made.
“What I heard – repeatedly – was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President,” Zelinsky’s statement reads.
Shaub is far from the only expert to sound the alarm bell.
Former US Attorney Barb McQuade, now an MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst and University of Michigan Law professor calls for Barr to go.
Matthew Miller, a former DOJ chief spokesperson now an MSNBC justice and security analyst:
Mimi Rocah, a former SDNY prosecutor, Pace Law School professor, legal commentator:
Joyce Vance, a former US Attorney, now a University of Alabama Law Professor and MSNBC contributor:
Rachel Barkow, an NYU Law Professor and Faculty Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law: