Judge wants to make sure Barr Isnt doing Roger Stone a favor

A federal court issued a brief order on Wednesday afternoon in an apparent attempt to make sure that Attorney General Bill Barr’s DOJ isn’t exerting improper influence over prison stint of President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant and political advisor Roger Stone. The order just so happened to come down on the same day so-called whistleblowers testified about the DOJ’s controversial intervention in Stone’s sentencing recommendations.U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson advised the Department of Justice (DOJ) to come prepared in a filing due Thursday with some sort of precedent in the district–or by way of an agency internal policy–that would support delaying the start of Stone’s imprisonment any further.

“The government’s submission on June 25, 2020 should direct the Court to any existing DOJ or USAO-DC policies concerning responding to defendants’ requests to voluntarily surrender or to delay surrender dates in light of COVID-19, and it should indicate how it has responded to similar motions in other cases,” the minute order says.