WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th June, 2020) US Attorney General William Barr rejected charges that he intervened in the sentencing of long-time Trump associate Roger Stone to ensure fairness and not because of pressure from the US president, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a press release on Wednesday.
"In the interest of ensuring the imposition of a 'fair sentence', the Attorney General directed Tim Shea, who was then US attorney for the District of Columbia to leave the sentencing to the discretion of the judge. The judge ultimately sentenced Mr. Stone to half the time that the line prosecutors had originally posed," the release, posted on Twitter, said.
Kupec issued the release shortly before prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky told the US House f Representatives Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had treated Stone differently from all other defendants because of his relationship with Trump.
Kupec repeated previous assertions by Barr that he had never discussed the Stone case with Trump.
The prosecution team lead by Zelinsky recommended a seven- to nine-year jail term for Stone, who was later sentenced to 40 months in prison on multiple charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. The investigation no evidence of collusion.
Stone served as a liaison between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the publishing platform WikiLeaks, which published stolen emails of internal discussions within rival candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
