1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr's resignation
More than 1,100 former Justice Department officials signed a letter released Sunday calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign, Time reports. The open letter came days after Barr's Justice Department overruled prosecutors and reduced a sentencing recommendation for President Trump's longtime confidant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering. The DOJ officials who signed the letter said Barr was "doing the president's personal bidding."
"It is unheard of for the department's top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the president, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case," wrote the DOJ officials, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Barr has said Trump did not influence the decision to push for a lighter sentence for Stone.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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