House Democrats are seeking interviews with several Justice Department officials that could speak to improper political interference in the Department, including the handful of prosecutors who quit Roger Stone’s case over a sentencing dispute.
The request was made in a letter Friday from House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to Attorney General Bill Barr.
In addition to the Stone debacle, Nadler highlighted the apparent DOJ intervention in former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s sentencing recommendation, Barr’s appointment of outside prosecutions to review the decisions of career officials in those cases, and the DOJ attempt to stifle the intelligence community whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s Ukraine conflict.
Nadler noted that when Congress was conducting oversight of the Clinton email probe and the origins of the Russia investigation, Trump’s Justice Department made available for interviews more than a dozen DOJ officials involved in those matters and produced for Congress more than 1 million pages of documents.
Besides the Stone case’s trial team, the Judiciary Committee also wants to interview the U.S. attorneys whom Barr has assigned to review the Flynn and Stone cases; the current and former U.S. attorneys of offices that have cases with ties to Trump; and the U.S. attorney who has been tasked with processing claims from Rudy Giuliani related to Trump’s Ukraine smear campaign.
Nadler’s letter pointed to Barr’s own publicly expressed concerns about Trump’s tweets bashing the DOJ’s prosecutions.
“Although you serve at the President’s pleasure, you are also charged with the impartial administration of our laws,” Nadler said. “In turn, the House Judiciary Committee is charged with holding you to that responsibility.”
Read the letter below:
