By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on February 18, 2020
Roger Stone's case may be a blessing in disguise for America. The 67-year-old Stone is President Donald Trump's close friend. He was targeted by rogue federal prosecutors, charged with lying to Congress (which defense lawyers characterize as a "process crime"), convicted in what Trump calls a "rigged" federal court system, and is waiting to be sentenced this week in Washington by Amy Berman Jackson, a Barack Obama-appointed federal judge. The prosecutors in Stone's case -- Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed, and Michael Marando -- asked the judge to sentence him to seven to nine years in prison.
President Trump, Attorney General William Barr, and other top Department of Justice (DOJ) officials have called this sentencing recommendation "horrible," "very unfair," a "miscarriage of justice," "excessive," "extreme," and "grossly disproportionate to Stone's offenses." In an obvious reference to the prosecutors in Stone's case, Trump noted that "[t]he real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happened to them."
The four prosecutors in Stone's case reportedly threatened to quit the case and hold a news conference if they did not get their way. They were minions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Obama administration's designated DOJ "hit man" for taking down Trump and subjecting his children to prosecutorial abuse.
After two-years of sending Donald Trump and his oldest three children through pure hell, Mueller lost his nerve and declined to indict Trump on charges of colluding with Russia on the 2016 presidential election. However, Mueller's henchmen soldiered on, unsupervised and unaccountable to anyone in the DOJ.
They pursued process crimes against a dozen or so low-level Trump campaign advisers to justify the $25 million of taxpayers' money that was spent on persecuting Trump.
The federal judges who should have reigned-in these rogue prosecutors failed to do so. Most of them coddled these prosecutors and ignored their abuse of the criminal justice system.
TV Pundits and Democrats are blasting Trump for "meddling" in the DOJ's internal affairs. More than 2,000 former DOJ prosecutors and officials have criticized Barr for overruling the excessive sentencing recommendation of the Mueller prosecutors.
Under pressure, Barr even took a shot at Trump last week by complaining that the President was making it "impossible" for him to do his job. Hopefully, Barr is not morphing into another Jeff Sessions.
President Trump may be subject to many criticisms, but he is right on this matter. The DOJ falls within the executive branch of our national government, which Trump heads. Every president has the clear power and authority to direct any and all operations of the Department, without exception. No Constitutional provision or federal law mandates that President Trump must stay out of any legal matter where the United States is a party.
History is on Trump's Side
President John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) appointed his brother, Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, as Attorney General to make sure rogue FBI agents, federal prosecutors and cooperating judges would never try to take down John Kennedy. The Kennedy brothers were well aware of how ruthless this group of DOJ officials could be. The brothers, who were philanderers inside and outside the White House, feared FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and his rogue agents. They witnessed the lawlessness perpetrated by DOJ officials during the Bureau's infamous COINTELPRO era from 1956 to 1971. COINTELPRO targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and thousands of other civil rights activists for harassment, trumped up criminal charges, home-cooking in the courtrooms of sympathetic federal judges, and the destruction of the victims' reputations and lives. The FBI even tried to pressure King into committing suicide.
President Obama (a Democrat) appointed his friend, Eric Holder, as Attorney General to make sure rogue FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors did not turn on Obama. Holder even referred to himself as Obama's "wingman." Fully aware of the DOJ's torrid history of officially sanctioned COINTELPRO operations, Holder covered Obama's back and used the DOJ to protect and defend controversial public policies like ObamaCare and transgender restrooms in public schools that received federal funding.
Following suit, President Trump appointed former U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as Attorney General to make sure that the rogue FBI agents and federal prosecutors who hated Trump would not attempt a bloodless coup d'etat to overturn the outcome of the 2016 election. Unfortunately for Trump, Sessions turned out to be weak and compromised. He deserted the President as soon as Mueller declared war on Trump and his children. Donald Trump survived Mueller's nasty, vicious, and politically-motivated coup d'etat.
Now is the time for President Trump to implement a genuine system of accountability within the ranks of DOJ's career prosecutors. He is the only person in government with the backbone to do it.
Ordinary citizens cannot hold rogue prosecutors accountable because all prosecutors enjoy immunity from civil lawsuits.
Most federal judges will not hold them accountable either. They willingly subjugate themselves to rogue prosecutors while exhibiting a "go along to get along" attitude.
America's best chance for achieving meaningful criminal justice reform and accountability over unsupervised, "corrupt" prosecutors lies with Donald Trump. He knows, firsthand, the "evil" he is fighting within the DOJ. If Trump wins this fight, all Americans will benefit.
Americans should step back and let President Trump's criminal justice reform initiatives clean up the corruption within the DOJ.
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