Strange Scenes At Roger Stone’s Sentencing Raise Even More Questions About William Barr

Aaron Blake of The Washington Post wrote:Official Washington has been consumed over the past week with the drama at the Justice Department. Attorney General William P. Barr is increasingly embattled thanks to President Trump’s heavy-handed approach to DOJ business, in which Barr has unsuccessfully urged Trump to stop meddling.

The scenes in a courtroom Thursday — where Stone was ultimately sentenced to 40 months in prison — only heightened the drama. And they raised more questions about what in the world is happening inside Barr’s DOJ.

Barr intervened last week to overrule career prosecutors’ tough, seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation for Trump ally Roger Stone — shortly after Trump tweeted in opposition to the recommended sentence. That prompted the four prosecutors on the case to withdraw. Then came a more watered-down recommendation, which was signed by the prosecutor now leading the charge for the Justice Department, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb.

But at Stone’s sentencing hearing on Thursday, Crabb sounded a very different tone. He repeatedly appeared to push the recommendation in the direction of the initial prosecutors’ harsher one, arguing for enhancements that the more recent memo suggested were unnecessary or unsubstantiated.

For instance, Crabb pushed for an enhancement because Stone’s obstruction of justice succeeded. The latest sentencing recommendation, though, argued that such an enhancement would be duplicative because “it is unclear to what extent the defendant’s obstructive conduct actually prejudiced the government at trial.” The judge, Amy Berman Jackson, granted the enhancement.

In another instance, Crabb seemed to pretty explicitly argue the initial recommendation was still in effect. According to The Post’s team:

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb seemed to endorse the same, technical logic prosecutors had used in generating their recommendation in the first sentencing memorandum. Asked by Jackson about the change in position, Crabb said, “The guidelines enhancement applies here for the reasons set forth in the original sentencing memorandum.” He did not elaborate.

“What is the government’s position today?” Jackson asked, emphasizing the word today. When Crabb said he had nothing more to offer, she said with a bit of exasperation, “Okay, fine.”

Perhaps the most remarkable moment, though, came when the judge eventually tried to reconcile Crabb’s performance with his name having been on the updated sentencing recommendation, which he didn’t seem to be pushing.

Jackson asked whether he had actually written the memo; Crabb again declined to elaborate on what has happened within the Justice Department.

When she pressed, he even left open the possibility that he was directed to write it … by someone.

The scenes will heighten suspicions about what’s happening behind the scenes in the Justice Department. Some suggested Crabb was perhaps making a statement by reverting to the arguments in the first recommendation. If that’s not the case, though, the fact that he did move in that direction suggests this whole drama was somewhat pointless in the first place. If the Justice Department was just going to argue the same points from the first recommendation, why overrule the sentencing recommendation and make it look like Trump was dictating how his Justice Department prosecuted his ally?

Looming over all of it is Trump’s continued disregard for Barr’s request to stop tweeting about these matters. Even as the sentencing hearing was getting started on Thursday, Trump was tweeting about Stone and another case in which the Justice Department recently opted not to pursue charges — that of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

Barr has said such tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job” and has put out word that he has considered resigning if it continues.

It has continued, and the scenes in the courtroom Thursday don’t exactly suggest an attorney general who has control of the situation.