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AFP
Washington
Over a thousand former Justice Department officials have signed a statement calling on Donald Trump’s attorney general to resign over his interference in the sentencing of the president’s ally Roger Stone.
The statement, circulating online on Sunday, accused Trump and Attorney General William Barr of “openly and repeatedly” flouting the bedrock principle of evenhanded, non-partisan application of the law.
“A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the president,” the statement said.
“Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies,” it said.
Prosecutors last week recommended that Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison after he was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian election meddling and lying to investigators.
Trump blasted the recommendation on Twitter as “horrible and very unfair.” Barr intervened hours later, withdrawing the recommendation as “extreme and excessive and disproportionate.”
Facing a mounting outcry, Barr rebuked Trump in an interview on Thursday, saying the president’s tweets were making his job “impossible.”
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17/02/2020
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