Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called on Wednesday for Attorney General William Barr to “resign or face impeachment” after the Justice Department pushed back on prosecutors’ “excessive” sentencing recommendation for President Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone.
“Congress must act immediately to rein in our lawless Attorney General,” the Massachusetts senator wrote in a tweet. “Barr should resign or face impeachment.”
Warren also demanded that Congress use its funding powers to constrain the attorney general’s ability to interfere with “anything that affects Trump, his friends, or his elections.”
After President Trump complained Tuesday on Twitter that the prosecutors seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation constituted a “horrible and very unfair situation,” his Justice Department submitted a revised filing stating that the prosecutors’ recommended lengthy sentence “could be considered excessive and unwarranted.”
Stone was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. All four of the prosecutors who recommended Stone’s seven to nine year sentence either resigned or quit the case after the DOJ weighed in.
The White House denied Trump had pressured the DOJ to show lenience to Stone.
“He’s the chief law enforcement officer. He has the right to do it. He just didn’t,” said Hogan Gidley, the White House principal deputy press secretary, saying Trump “did not interfere here with anything.”
Trump congratulated Barr later in the day for “taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.”
Warren noted that she has called for an independent Justice Department task force to investigate alleged crimes by Trump administration officials and called on all other Democratic candidates to commit to doing the same, “so Trump officials know they will be held accountable by career prosecutors once he is out of office.”
“Abusing official power to protect political friends and attack opponents is common in authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia,” Warren said. “Trump and Barr’s conduct has no place in our democracy. To end it, Congress must act—and the American people must hold them accountable in November.”