Quelle Scandale

He got caught, OBAMAGATE! https://t.co/oV6fum0zIS

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2020

Or not:

Both the facts surrounding Liu’s sudden departure and what transpired after Shea’s appointment raise grave concerns about the impartial administration of justice by the office that would be best addressed by appointing a qualified, veteran career prosecutor to take over the role. Shortly after Shea’s appointment, President Trump publicly criticized the harshness of the sentencing recommendation filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in the case of Roger Stone — an associate and ally of the president convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation.

Soon thereafter, Shea’s office filed a supplemental sentencing memorandum arguing that the court should impose a more lenient sentence than was initially recommended. This recommendation was a stark departure both from the office’s prior position and from DOJ’s operative charging and sentencing policy, which disfavors sentence recommendations lower than the applicable federal sentencing guidelines range.

As a result of this sudden reversal, all four career prosecutors who had represented the government in its prosecution of Stone moved to withdraw from the case, and one resigned from the department altogether. At the same time, the president also abruptly withdrew his nomination of Liu (who had overseen the prosecution of Stone) to a position at the Treasury just days before her confirmation hearing was scheduled in the Senate. According to news reports, the president’s decision was due to Liu’s handling of the Stone and McCabe cases.

This course of events overwhelmingly suggests that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was subject to improper political pressure in the prosecution of an individual matter. More than 1,100 former DOJ prosecutors and officials from both political parties signed a letter condemning Trump and Barr’s political interference in the Stone matter and objecting to the department’s failure to comply with DOJ policy requiring its decisions “be impartial and insulated from political influence.” Separately, 60 former assistant U.S. attorneys who had served in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office publicly urged Shea to take affirmative steps to resist political interference or influence from the president and attorney general.

Events since the Stone sentencing debacle only reinforce these concerns. Reports soon emerged that Barr had taken the exceptional step of directing another U.S. attorney to review the office’s prosecution of another close associate of the president, Michael Flynn.

This atypical external review culminated earlier this week with the unprecedented and stunning decision by Shea to file a motion to withdraw the criminal information to which Flynn already had pled guilty. The motion advanced a narrow, defense-friendly view of whether Flynn’s lies were “material” — an argument DOJ would never accept in an ordinary criminal case. Notably, no career prosecutors signed the motion, and the lead career prosecutor in the Flynn case withdrew from the case shortly before the motion was filed. Former federal prosecutors could recall no other instance in the history of the department where it moved to withdraw charges after the defendant entered a negotiated guilty plea and admitted to the charged facts.

This is what Obama was talking about, and in the face of such facts, it is the obligation of citizens, especially those who know a thing or two about how this is supposed to work, to speak up!