President Trump’s Twitter game is strong.
In his most recent bombshell, he accused former FBI Director and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller of lying to Congress.
He didn’t provide any immediate evidence, but that hasn’t stopped him from hitting “Send” on a scorcher before.
He has a point.
Mueller did lie on several occasions to Congress during testimony.
Will he be held accountable?
His accusation comes in the midst of a growing controversy involving AG William Barr and the Justice Department's decision to reduce the recommended sentence of Trump ally Roger Stone.
Last November, Stone was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements to Congress during Mueller's investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.
BREAKING: There was no collusion.
The whole Russian collusion debacle was a waste of taxpayer money.
Read more from The Hill:
Attorney General Bill Barr is engulfed in a political firestorm on Capitol Hill amid the fallout from the Justice Department's decision to reduce its recommended sentence for Roger Stone.
Democrats are clamoring for Barr to testify and for the department’s decision to be investigated, arguing the move is the latest sign that Trump is feeling emboldened after Republicans acquitted him last week of abusing his power and obstructing Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called Barr an “enabler” of Trump, adding, “That’s a kind word.”
“It appears the attorney general of the United States and other political appointees at the Justice Department intervened to countermand the sentencing recommendation,” Schumer said.
The decision set off alarm bells around Washington given the context. Days after his Senate acquittal, Trump had removed two key impeachment witnesses from their positions and had yanked the nomination of an individual involved in the Stone case.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the onus is on Barr to speak publicly about the Justice Department’s decision. So far, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has maintained radio silence about what role the attorney general might have had in the push to reduce Stone’s sentence.
“There’s no way this happened without his direction,” Murphy said. “The attorney general has made it clear that his priority is to be a political agent of the president.”
Calls for Barr to testify began Tuesday when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said he needed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I request that you immediately schedule a hearing for Attorney General William Barr to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee so that the committee and the American people can understand the Justice Department’s decision,” Harris wrote in a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the panel.
To complicate matters, the DOJ prosecutors who worked the Stone case abruptly resigned when news of the reduced sentence broke.
Seems to me like this is a political stunt.
DOJ will not decide the sentence, only the presiding judge can do that.
DOJ only reduced the RECOMMENDATION.
Read the CNN report of it:
In an extraordinary move, all four federal prosecutors who took the case against longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone to trial withdrew Tuesday after top Justice Department officials undercut them and disavowed the government's recommended sentence against Stone.
The mass withdrawal of the career prosecutors on the case was a stunning response to the controversial and politically charged decision by Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials to reduce prosecutors' recommended sentence of up to nine years, which came just hours after Trump publicly criticized it on Twitter.
The rapid-fire developments in the case -- the prosecutors' withdrawals came one by one through court filings over the course of two hours Tuesday afternoon -- spilled tensions between Justice Department brass and the career prosecutors into the open, raising questions about the Justice Department's independence from political pressure. In a new filing Tuesday, the US Attorney's Office in Washington revised the sentencing recommendation to be "far less" than the seven-to-nine years recommended on Monday. It was not signed by any of the prosecutors who worked the case.
Ultimately, the presiding judge in the case will have the final say on Stone's sentence.
Trump denied any involvement in the sentencing revision, but the turnaround drew howls from congressional Democrats, who called for the Justice Department inspector general to investigate.
"It is outrageous that DOJ has deeply damaged the rule of law by withdrawing its recommendation," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, tweeted Tuesday. "Stepping down of prosecutors should be commended & actions of DOJ should be investigated."
Of the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case -- Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Mike Marando -- Zelinsky and Kravis also resigned from the DC US attorney's office. Zelinsky, who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's team, did not resign from the Baltimore US attorney's office, where he is based.
President Trump, never one to back down from a fight, congratulated Barr and the Justice Department for reducing the sentence and criticized the prosecutors for their treatment of Stone.
Our President knows how to get under the media's skin, that's for sure!
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