Roger Stone Win McNamee/Getty Images
Timothy Shea became the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia last week. On Tuesday, his career ended.
Shea is still technically in office, but his ability to effectively lead the nation’s largest U.S. Attorney’s Office has ceased. That’s because Shea did something unheard of: One day after career prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum with the court in the Roger Stone case, seeking a sentence that complies with federal guidelines, Shea publicly overruled them by asking the court for a more lenient sentence.
Bowing to political pressure from the president violates the duty of prosecutors to bring impartial justice. Even the appearance that a prosecutor’s office has been swayed by political influence harms its effectiveness by eroding public confidence in its independence. A Department of Justice that favors the friends of those in power is no longer true to its name.
Shea may have pleased his boss for the moment, but running a U.S. Attorney’s Office requires leading in both directions of the chain of command. In this case, Shea may have won the president’s approval, but he has lost the trust of the real public servants who work in his office and across the country.
And he is now the perfect symbol of Trump and Barr’s badly damaged Department of Justice.
Navy Vet
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