Federal judges hold emergency meeting on DOJ interference in Roger Stone case as calls grow for Barr’s removal
Former deputy director of public affairs for the Department of Justice Ian Prior reacts.
Amid backlash over the Department of Justice seeking to reduce Roger Stone’s recommended sentence, Ian Prior, a former DOJ public affairs deputy director, said that no one in the Justice Department is taking the calls for Attorney General Bill Barr’s resignation seriously.
Prior’s comments on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday came after a national association of federal judges called an emergency meeting to tackle mounting concerns about President Trump and senior Justice Department officials’ intervention in cases involving Trump associates.
USA Today first reported that the independent Federal Judges Association would hold the meeting.
The call for the meeting follows a tumultuous week in which Barr’s DOJ intervened in the cases involving Trump associates Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
More than 1,100 former Justice Department employees have signed an online petition urging him to resign.
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“This is just a resistance letter,” Prior said, adding that the letter was put together by a group called Protect Our Democracy and is part of overall “faux outrage” over the Stone case.
“It’s really just ex-Obama officials funded by liberal donors that are trying to resist the Trump administration with litigation and statements like that,” he added.
Prior said the 1,000-2,000 people signing the letter make up “001 percent of all current and living former DOJ employees.”
Prior rejected the notion that the letter is bipartisan since petitioners from both parties signed.
“Well, the majority of the people that signed that are career employees, so, of course, they served multiple administrations, but, it’s not like they have big-name political appointees from past Republican administrations on that. I don’t think anybody in the Justice Department takes it seriously,” he said.
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Last Monday, federal prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of between 87 and 108 months for Stone after he was convicted on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements to Congress on charges that stemmed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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