This is the essence of authoritarianism
By 
The law for your enemies; impunity for your allies:
The Justice Department is expected to file a new sentencing memo Tuesday walking back its one-day old recommendation that Roger Stone serve seven to nine years in prison, Fox News reported.
The report, based on a senior DOJ source, comes less than 24 hours after federal prosecutors in D.C. filed a sentencing memo for Stone calculating the guidelines for his sentence to be between 87-108 months.
The senior DOJ official told Fox News that the Justice Department was “shocked” by the memo and that the recommendation was “not what had been briefed to the Department.”
“The Department finds seven to nine years extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate to Mr. Stone’s offenses,” the DOJ source said, according to the report, while claiming that the decision to walk back the recommendation was made before President Trump tweeted that it was a “miscarriage of justice.”
Quite a coincidence:
This somehow reminds of of what a Mexican DA once told me about the acts of vengeance carried out by the various drug cartels: “These guys don’t believe in coincidences.”
All of this is going to get much worse very quickly. And it’s bad enough now.
P.S. I don’t want to hear any mewling about how Stone’s original sentence was too harsh. While that sentence for what he was convicted of was indeed harsh, what Stone has been convicted of is not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of this career criminal’s lifelong campaign to destroy democracy in America (and yes that can be take into account in sentencing).
ETA: As commenters are pointing out, the judge isn’t bound by the DOJ’s recommendation. As they’re also pointing out, giving Stone a harsher sentence than the formal recommendation makes it that much easier to pardon him, which I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump does immediately after the sentence, via Twitter.
. . . Schiff’s statement.
Three of the four prosecutors involved in the sentencing memo have now resigned, either from the case, or from the DOJ altogether:
Every Democratic leader and presidential candidate has to get in front of a microphone this evening and talk about this.
. . . new sentencing memo says previous DOJ recommendation [!] was “excessive and unwarranted;” refuses to recommend a new sentence.