MacMahon, the defense attorney, noted that while he believes the sentencing guidelines are “out of whack,” and that the 7-9 year sentence prosecutors recommended for Stone was “heavy and unrealistic,” Trump’s comments were still inappropriate. “Should the president be intervening publicly in a criminal case?” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Barr works for the president. That’s a matter of fact,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean DOJ’s decisions have to be political—they’re supposed to be in furtherance of the rule of law.”
Not even members of the conservative Federalist Society, whose co-chairman Leonard Leo has helped Trump stock the nation’s courts with conservative judges, seemed completely comfortable with the president’s conduct.
“I’m not super bothered in that it isn’t uncommon for senior members of DOJ to ‘interfere’ with individual prosecutions done by U.S. attorneys,” said one member of the Federalist Society who clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice. But “from an optics perspective, sure, it is concerning,” this person acknowledged, adding that “it looks like Trump is getting involved in his friends’” cases.
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