Bureaucrats bristle as the attorney general delivers on his pledge of accountability.
The Roger Stone sentencing uproar is deeply important, and not because it’s another Trump “scandal.” Rather, it’s a clash that was always coming—the moment at which an ungoverned bureaucracy smacked up against Attorney General William Barr’s promise to restore equal justice and accountability at the Justice Department.
Democrats and the media are in a tizzy over the department leadership’s Tuesday decision to file a sentencing memo calling for Mr. Stone to receive a shorter prison sentence than four line prosecutors originally recommended. The reversal came not long after President Trump tweeted his own outrage over the initial sentencing memo, leading to the inevitable conspiracy theories and calls for investigation.
Democrats claimed Mr. Trump politically interfered with justice, bullying the department into going easy on a political crony. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proclaims “a crisis in the rule of law.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Impeachment) declared another “abuse of power.” The press is casting it as Example A of how a postacquittal Trump feels emboldened to ignore the law.
This has it entirely backward. Here’s what actually happened: Justice sources tell me that interim U.S. Attorney Tim Shea had told the department’s leadership he and other career officials in the office felt the proposed sentence was excessive. As the deadline for the filing neared, the prosecutors on the case nonetheless threatened to withdraw from the case unless they got their demands for these stiffest of penalties. Mr. Shea—new to the job—suffered a moment of cowardice and submitted to this ultimatum. The filing took Justice Department leaders by surprise, and the decision to reverse was made well before Mr. Trump tweeted, and with no communication with the White House. The revised filing, meanwhile, had the signature of the acting supervisor of the office’s criminal division, who is a career civil servant, not a political appointee.
This is Mr. Barr getting rid of politics in justice—as he promised. In his confirmation hearing, the attorney general vowed an “even-handed application of the law” rather than judgments based on politics or favoritism (see Clinton investigation vs. Trump investigation). Before the president’s tweet, even liberal commentators were acknowledging the initial recommendation of up to nine years in prison was harsh, given that Mr. Stone is a first-time offender. The request came from a prosecutorial team—which included two members of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s staff—that wanted to punish Mr. Stone for his ties to a president they loathe.
And don’t forget the mitigating factors. Remember how Mr. Stone ended up in the Justice Department’s crosshairs. It was after Team Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and Fusion GPS weaponized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go after political opponents. Mr. Mueller could easily have unraveled this ambush. Instead, he rampaged through dozens of lives, and—unable to find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, his original charge—obtained indictments for process crimes. That’s no excuse for Mr. Stone’s behavior, but his sentence ought to reflect that he was prosecuted by an overzealous, politicized Justice Department.
Mr. Barr also promised accountability, and the permanent bureaucracy is displaying its contempt for that mission. Line prosecutors made clear up front that they’d cause a political spectacle unless their demands were met. When overruled, four went on to withdraw. In a Washington Post op-ed, former Justice Department employee Chuck Rosenberg summed up the resistance to supervision: “We all understand that the leadership at the top of the department is politically appointed, and we make peace with that.”
Make peace with that? The Constitution provides for the election of the president and Senate. They appoint the officials who call shots and make policy. Career civil servants aren’t some aristocratic class entitled to immunity from supervision. They are employees. The danger isn’t political authority, but rather an unelected mandarin class that believes itself exempt from democratic accountability.
Mr. Barr’s reassertion of basic principles is overdue and important. The pity is that President Trump is ruining the moment with ill-considered tweets and statements that feed the conspiracy narratives. Mr. Trump is right to distrust the bureaucrats, but he should trust the attorney general to do the right thing—and give him the time and space to do it. His every comment on Mr. Stone puts Mr. Barr in a more difficult position—and for what? Mr. Barr on Thursday publicly asked the president to lay off, and he should.
Yet the real story this week is that in the end the Justice Department requested a reasonable sentence for Mr. Stone, and Mr. Barr schooled overzealous prosecutors in the importance of evenhandedness, integrity and respecting the chain of command. The only scandal, yet again, is that so much of partisan Washington is willing to throw mud on this progress in the name of damaging this White House.