'Livid and Frightened': Inside the DOJ Office at the Center of the Roger Stone Scandal

[babylonsister]

February 13, 2020 3:44PM ET
‘Livid and Frightened’: Inside the DOJ Office at the Center of the Roger Stone Scandal
Government prosecutors are angry and looking for the exits after a political appointee intervened to give Trump crony Roger Stone a lighter sentence.
By Andy Kroll

snip//

The Justice Department has denied that Barr acted at the direction of Trump to lighten Stone’s punishment, but the sequence of events is damning all the same. It appears as if the DOJ rebuked its own lawyers to go easy on a longtime friend of the president’s. A department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The morale of DOJ’s thousands of prosecutors is no small matter. These lawyers work on the front lines of protecting the rule of law. Disillusionment and frustration among this corps of attorneys has real-world consequences for the fair application of justice across the country.

Channing Phillips, who served in the Justice Department for nearly three decades and led the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. under Republican and Democratic presidents, including Donald Trump, tells Rolling Stone that he never witnessed a series of events during his time in public service comparable to what happened in the Stone case.

“I found the whole sequence of events deeply disturbing,” Phillips says. “I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope never to see anything like it again.”

Phillips says morale in the office “took a huge hit” this week based on the conversations he’s had. He said that Jonathan Kravis, the federal prosecutor who worked the Stone case and quit the DOJ after his recommendation was reversed, was well-respected and seen as a loyal public servant. “When you work in the trenches like we do, we feel each other’s pain, and so to see someone give up a career that they care about …” Phillips says. “On the other hand, these guys [who withdrew from the case or resigned] should be looked at as heroes, because when they took the job they took an oath, and clearly from where I sit they weren’t willing to sacrifice that oath. Kudos to them for doing that.”

Another former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C., who requested anonymity to share responses from old colleagues still working there, says lawyers are “livid and frightened” after the events of this week.

“Some are just trying to fly under the radar,” the former prosecutor tells Rolling Stone. “All are looking for jobs outside of the government, but many don’t have the time in to leave. I really never have seen anything like this.”

more...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/roger-stone-justice-department-bill-barr-mueller-952563/

[madaboutharry]

1. DOJ jobs are very coveted among lawyers.

The pay is ok, certainly not what one could earn in a big law firm, but the benefits are big. Federal health insurance which you can keep after 5 years, a pension which after 20 years in that allows for a very comfortable retirement, and a thrift savings plan which has a match component. It is pitiful that this fascist president is altering the careers and futures of decent people who just want to do their jobs.

[2naSalit]

2. Rapid active measures

to make us all serfs in a hurry.

[DENVERPOPS]

9. Good reasons for staying

Especially if you are not worried about getting bitten by any of the rabid assholes runnining in or around this asshole & his admin......

[enough]

3. Getting good people to quit government at all levels is the plan.

This is what they want, to shrink government and totally change its purpose. The DOJ is the most valuable target, but they’re doing it in every area of government.

When they hear that morale is plummeting, they cheer.

[MyOwnPeace]

10. In this case, it's people

that are protecting the law and the constitution.
In the EPA it's people protecting our environment from the "money-hungry industries."
In the Foreign Service/State Department it's people protecting us from other "really mean people" (as IQ45 would call them) and working to make our world a safer place in which to live.

What sick people these Republicans are to want to do all of that to us.

And to think that there's about 40% of Americans that think this is all OK.........................

[WhiteTara]

4. If we escape, there will be a lot of rebuilding

to do in all branches of civil service. We are close to truly, truly screwn.

[Dennis Donovan]

5. Barr believed his performance yesterday would quell this

Yeah, likely not.

[imanamerican63]

6. Someone needs to turn the higher ups in to the ethics board or even into the bar association?

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Making the world safe for mobsters and despots

They've not been having much love since 1945

[ashredux]

8. It's a plan.

President Trump is surgically working to destroy the very organizations that keep us safe. He has already gutted the state department, is currently working on the Justice Department and next in line is the intelligence community. He wants to purge anyone who tells the truth about who he is and what he’s done