Attorney General Barr moves to take reins of politically charged cases

While Attorney General William P Barr asserted his independence from the White House this week, he has also been quietly intervening in a series of politically charged cases, including against Michael T Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Barr installed a phalanx of outside lawyers to re-examine national security cases with the possibility of overruling career prosecutors, a highly unusual move that could prompt more accusations of Justice Department politicisation. The case against Mr. Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the Russia investigation, is a cause célèbre for Mr. Trump and his supporters, who say the retired general was ensnared in a “deep state” plot against the president.

The disclosures came as Trump made clear on Friday that he believes he has free rein over the Justice Department and its cases, rejecting Mr. Barr’s public demand of a day earlier that the president stop commenting on such cases.

Citing Barr’s assertion in an interview on Thursday that Mr. Trump had never asked him to act in a criminal case, the president declared on Twitter: “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!”

Hours later, the Justice Department told defense lawyers for Andrew G McCabe, the former acting FBI director whom Mr. Trump has vilified for his role in the Russia case, that Mr. McCabe would not be charged in connection with a leak case, ending a nearly two-year criminal investigation.

“We consider the matter closed,” the department wrote to McCabe’s lawyers.

Together, the developments send conflicting signals at a time when the Justice Department’s independence from political interference by the White House has come under sharp scrutiny.

Barr publicly challenged Mr. Trump after the turmoil this week over the case against Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime friend and political adviser, threatened to erupt into a full-blown crisis.

After prosecutors recommended on Monday a seven- to nine-year sentence for Mr. Stone on seven felony convictions, the president criticised the move. Senior law enforcement officials overruled the career prosecutors the next day, immediately prompting accusations of political interference.

Though Barr said that he had intended to intervene to ask a judge to impose a more lenient sentence, he also said that Trump had complicated his plans by creating the specter of political tampering and that the president’s commentary was making his job “impossible.”

The four prosecutors involved in the case out of the US attorney’s office in Washington quit it.

Stone’s lawyers filed a sealed motion on Friday seeking a new trial, which could delay his sentencing scheduled for next week. It came a day after Trump alleged juror bias in Stone’s trial.

Barr installed the outside lawyers at the start of February and put them in a position to second-guess decisions on those cases, people familiar with the office’s workings said. Among the outsiders were Jeff Jensen, whom Mr. Trump appointed as the United States attorney in St Louis in 2017, and aides to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the deputy attorney general.

Barr’s intervention was described by multiple people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate internal deliberations. The Justice Department declined to comment.

The attorney general has also recently installed a personal aide, Timothy Shea, as interim US attorney in Washington. 

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