These former departmental employees blame Bill Bar for having intervened in the criminal case of a loved one of Donald Trump.
A thousand former employees of the US Department of Justice asked, Sunday, February 16, the resignation of Bill Barr, who has headed this powerful administration for a year. They accuse him of having intervened in the criminal case of a relative of Donald Trump. Roger Stone, a former adviser and friend of Donald Trump, was found guilty of lying to Congress and suborning a witness as part of the investigation into Moscow’s presidential interference in 2016. He is awaiting his sentence.
Federal prosecutors advised a sentence of between 7 and 9 years in prison on Monday, drawing wrath from Donald Trump who tried the recommendation on Twitter “very unfair”. The following day, the Ministry of Justice disowned them, suggesting a sentence “much less” on behalf of “interests of justice”. Bill Barr then assured that the president’s intervention had had no impact on the decision of his services, while calling on Donald Trump to stop the kind of tweets that make his job “impossible”.
“No one should receive preferential treatment in criminal proceedings because he is a close political ally of the president”, wrote more than 1,100 former civil servants, having worked for democratic and republican administrations, in an open letter published on Internet on Sunday. “We welcome the late recognition by the Attorney General Barr that departmental decisions must be independent of policy, comment on the former officials in their letter. But his actions to comply with the President’s orders speak more than his words. “
“As we have little hope that he will, it is up to each employee of the ministry to take the necessary measures to (…) defend an apolitical justice”, they add. They thus call on employees to report possible new interference to their hierarchy, to withdraw from politicized affairs, or even to resign and testify publicly.
–
