Emails: Trump Admin Suggested Lower Sentence For Roger Stone

Zelinsky told the House Judiciary Committee that he had told “leadership” in the US attorney’s office that he would withdraw “rather than sign a memo that was the result of wrongful political pressure,” and that the prosecution team eventually got approval to file their recommendation.At 1:48 a.m. on Feb. 11, Trump published his tweet calling the recommendation a “miscarriage of justice.” Later in the morning, Zelinsky testified that the prosecutors learned about media reports that DOJ planned to file a new sentencing recommendation.The emails provided to BuzzFeed News show that at 12:06 p.m., Michael Marando, another one of the lead prosecutors in Stone’s case, emailed Cooney about a tweet from a Fox News reporter that the Justice Department would be changing its sentencing recommendation for Stone.“FYI,” Marando wrote in his message to Cooney. One minute later, Cooney replied to Marando, “False.” Twenty seconds later, according to the time stamps on the emails, Marando forwarded Cooney’s response to Zelinsky.Five minutes later, Zelinsky replied to Marando and another lead Stone prosecutor, Jonathan Kravis, with a tweet from a CNN reporter that mirrored the Fox News tweet, quoting an unnamed Justice Department official criticizing their sentencing recommendation as “extreme and excessive” and “grossly disproportionate to Stone’s offenses.”Marando, Kravis, and the fourth member of the team, Adam Jed, withdrew from the case on Feb. 11 along with Zelinsky.After news broke that the prosecution team had withdrawn, Zelinsky received a message of encouragement from another assistant US attorney in Maryland, P.