Left: Donald Trump and Bill Barr attend Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service in 2019 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Center: Timothy Shea (Department of Justice). Right: Roger Stone at RNC in 2024 (Anthony Behar/Sipa USA/AP).
Before Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone was pardoned by the 45th president just in time for Christmas in 2020, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr installed his own counselor to serve as interim U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., ahead of Stone’s sentencing on convictions for obstruction, witness tampering, and lying about his contacts with WikiLeaks in the lead up to the 2016 election, a lingering case from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
What happened in February 2020 shortly after Timothy Shea’s appointment by Barr — a 7- to 9-year Stone sentencing recommendation, a barrage of Trump tweets calling that a “miscarriage of justice,” and a less severe revised sentencing recommendation — was the subject of congressional hearings featuring prosecutors who resigned en masse. Now, years later, a report from DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz paints a picture that falls far short of the kind of political intrigue and DOJ meddling that the self-ousting prosecutors described, even if the sequence of events was “highly unusual.”
According to the report, the “extraordinary” sentencing memo reversal and the ensuing firestorm was “largely” traceable to Shea’s “ineffectual leadership, which was marked by indecisiveness and poor communication,” as opposed to a presumed and alleged feverish and politicized response by Barr and Shea to Trump’s tweets.
“The evidence showed that immediately upon learning that evening from media reporting that the DC USAO’s memorandum’s sentencing recommendation was inconsistent with the approach that he and Shea had discussed, Barr expressed to members of his staff that the recommendation reported in the media did not reflect what he and Shea discussed earlier that day, and his view that it needed to be ‘fixed,”” the report said. “Several hours later, shortly after midnight on February 11, then President Trump issued tweets attacking the DC USAO’s sentencing memorandum. Thus, we found that Barr had articulated his position about the sentencing recommendation both before and shortly after the first sentencing memorandum was filed, and before the President’s tweets.”
The report also said it uncovered “no evidence” of misconduct on the part of Shea or DOJ leadership.
“Based on the evidence described in this report, we concluded that the sequence of events that resulted in the Department’s extraordinary step of filing a second sentencing memorandum was largely due to Shea’s ineffectual leadership,” the report said. “We found no evidence that DOJ leadership, Shea, or DC USAO supervisors engaged in misconduct or violated Department policy in connection with the Stone sentencing.”
Barr himself said in an NPR interview years ago that the testimony of former Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky was “double hearsay” and not based on “direct information” from decision-makers.
“He had never talked to anyone involved in the decision, whereas I actually made the decision,” Barr said in 2020. “I was the decision maker in that case because there was a dispute. And usually what happens is, disputes, especially in high profile cases, come up to the attorney general. It’s not unusual for there to be a dispute in a high-profile case and for it to be resolved by the attorney general.”
Barr said he never discussed the Stone sentencing with Trump and that the decision to modify the sentencing recommendations came before Trump angrily tweeted about a “miscarriage of justice!”
Barr added that while Stone didn’t “deserve a break,” he didn’t “deserve to be treated, and singled out, and treated more harshly than everyone else” either.
Amid the fallout in February 2020, Barr also sat for an interview with ABC News, where he said Trump “never” directly asked him to “do anything in a criminal case,” and that the former president’s tweets were making it “impossible” for him to do his job.
“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr said, several months before he submitted his resignation. “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody … whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president. I’m gonna do what I think is right. And you know … I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
The IG’s report isn’t entirely favorable to Barr, though, as Shea, the prosecutor described as “ineffectual” and thrown under the bus for the Stone controversy, was Barr’s counselor and was handpicked on an “ASAP” basis to fill the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia void before interviews were even conducted to replace Jessie Liu, who oversaw Stone’s case but resigned to accept Trump’s nomination to a top U.S. Treasury job — a nomination that was suddenly scrapped in February 2020:
On January 30, 2020, Barr announced the appointment of Timothy Shea as Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546, effective Monday, February 3, 2020. At the time of the announcement, Shea was a Counselor to the Attorney General, a position he had held since March 2019. Email communications and witness testimony reflect that although there was an interview process for Liu’s replacement involving multiple candidates, Barr had a strong preference at the start for Shea to fill the position. For example, on January 8, 2020, the day before the interviews began, Barr emailed his then Chief of Staff, Brian Rabbitt: “I want Tim [Shea] in place by the time I leave for Mexico. ASAP.” Rabbitt told us that he likely knew as early as late December 2019 that Barr “strongly wanted” to appoint Shea as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Of note, the IG’s office said, Barr “declined our request for a voluntary interview, and because the OIG does not have the authority to subpoena testimony from former Department employees, we were unable to compel his interview.”
Law&Crime reached out to Shea for comment on the IG report’s conclusions.
Read the full report here.
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