Jack Smith’s Anti-Trump Deputy Excoriated For Inappropriate Behavior At DOJ 1/4

BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY JULY 26, 2024

J.P. Cooney cultivated a politically toxic environment, disseminated baseless conspiracy theories, and engaged in unprofessional conduct, a report says.

Former Attorney General BillBarr did not improperly pressure prosecutors to reduce sentencing recommendationsfor political activist Roger Stone, according to a new government watchdog report. The exoneration of Barr came more than four years after a deluge of media reports alleging wrongdoing.

However,=J.P. Cooney,a Justice Department officialnow serving as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s top deputy, cultivated a politically toxic environment, disseminated baseless conspiracy theories about Trump and his political appointees, and engaged inunprofessional conductas he oversaw the team making sentencing recommendations, according to the same report.

Cooney is mentioned (as the “Fraud and Public Corruption Section Chief”) a whopping 394 times in the 85-page report released from the Justice Department’s inspector generalon July 24. Cooney supervised a team of four attorneys who prosecuted Stone for what the government successfullyargued in front of a Washington, D.C., jury were lies and obstructionduring Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign officials. Mueller’s two-year, $32 million investigation was itself spun up by anti-Trump officials in the Justice Department after the Democrat National Committee and Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton bought and paid for an information operation falsely alleging the Trump campaign was in cahoots with Russia to steal the 2016 election.Two members of Cooney’s team also worked on the Mueller investigation.

The Fraud and Public Corruption(FPC) team sought an unprecedented sentence of seven to nine years in prison for Stone, dramatically beyond what others convicted of similar crimes faced. When developing that sentencing goal, the team by its own admission thought the “closest analogue” to the Stone conviction was that of Scooter Libby, a target of a previous special counsel in a highly controversial prosecution. Libby’s proposed sentencing range was 30-37 months and he was sentenced to 30 months, which was derided as “excessive” by former President George W. Bush.

Yet the Cooney team larded up the Stone sentencing memowith every escalatory adjustment it could find, however disputable, to achieve a much harsher sentence and treat Stone differently than the Justice Department treats other defendants.

As soon asCooney’s supervisors saw what he and his team had planned, “they all agreed that the sentencing recommendation was too high” and expressed grave concern about the situation. Interim U.S. AttorneyTimothy Shea, who had started on the job just that week,said he “had never seen [perjury] cases produce a sentence that high, and that he was aware of many violent crimes that did not result in sentences ‘anywhere near’ the sentence the team was recommending for Stone,” according to the report. He noted that the escalatory adjustments were arguably made in error, in at least one case, and that the guidance was completely “out of whack” relative to other cases. Further, Stone was a “first-time offender, older than most offenders, and convicted of a nonviolent crime,” and “comparable cases” were sentenced around two to three years.

Cooney respondedto the criticism of his extreme sentencing proposalby spreading an elaborate conspiracy theorywith no supporting evidence that Trump, Barr, and Shea were being improperly political. Cooney admitted to investigators that “he had no information suggesting that anyone from Main Justice (i.e., DOJ leadership offices) was involved in the Stone sentencing at this time and no evidence pointing to improper motivations influencing these discussions” when he spread the conspiracy theory with his underlings.

In phone calls and other conversations with his prosecution team,Cooney spread his evidence-free conspiracy theory that “Shea was acting out of fear of then President Trump and, more particularly, fear of the consequences of not seeking a lower sentence for an influential friend of then President Trump.” He continued his conspiracy theories in other conversations. “Prosecutor 1 saidthat when he asked [Cooney] what was going on, [Cooney] replied that ‘this is coming from Main Justice.

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I can't find even one picture of Cooney, need your help anons. Strange its not even on DOj that I can find

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Tim Shea is getting pressure from Main Justice about the Stone sentencing recommendation, and Tim Shea is terrified of the President,’” according to the report. Cooney acknowledged he had no evidence to support these statements.

Another prosecutorsaid Cooney told him that “Shea did not care about Stone or the Stone case, but that Shea was ‘afraid of the President’ and that this fear was driving Shea’s actions,” according to the report. That same prosecutor said Cooney said multiple times that “Shea was afraid of the President and said it ‘with substantial conviction.’” Cooney later acknowledged he had no evidence to support his false claim.

At the same time, reporters began calling the Department of Justice to ask about the sentencing guideline dispute. That meant thatat least one personwithin the department was gettinginformation to reporters at left-wing mediaoutlets tobully Trump appointeesto acquiesce to their demands. Partisan bureaucrats had commonly used that tactic throughout the Trump presidency.

While strict guidelines opposedunauthorized disclosures to the press,DOJ and FBI officials rarely bothered to investigate such leaks, much less hold employees accountable for them. In many cases, they were the worst offenders. For example, former FBI Director James Comey leaked to the media by disclosing information to an attorney who then passed the information on to The New York Times. The investigative report on the sentencing memos discusses how various DOJ employees denied leaking to the media while also noting they spoke about the sentencing controversy with other attorneys.

Unsurprisingly, thesentencing dispute became a major news story, with the perspective of Cooney’s team adopted by the recipients of the leaks. After the Justice Department issued a second sentencing guideline memo,the four prosecutors all removed themselves from the case and were lavished with praise by left-wing media outlets.

Prosecutor AaronZelinskywent on to testify in front of Congress about the situation.His claimsthat the sentencing dispute was guided by politicswere untrue, but investigators blamed Cooney for spreading the falsehoods.

The second sentencing memo did not call for a specific jail time but left it to the judge’s discretion. Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed with the second sentencing memo and ordered Stone to serve 40 months in prison, many years fewer than Cooney’s team had aimed for. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence before he was taken into custody.

In its report, the Justice Department IG said thatCooney’s “speculative commentsin meetings with the trial team about the political motivations” of Trump officials “in connection with their handling of the Stone sentencingcontributed to an atmosphere of mistrust” that “unnecessarily further complicated an important decision in the case.” It further determined that his baseless comments to the trial team formed a substantial basis for Zelinsky’s explosive but wrong testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2020.

Cooney’s Checkered DOJ Record

Cooney’s track record at DOJ includes many other controversial political actions.

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His supervisorsnoted, “ did not provide evidence that Stone had likely committed a crime— the standard they considered appropriate for looking at a political figure.”

Further, his investigative plans were “treading on First Amendment-protected activities.”Nevertheless, he continued pursuing various plans to target Trump affiliates, and the U.S. attorney’s office began pursuing investigations along the lines of what Cooney had proposed, according to reporting.

President Biden and corporate media continued to pressure the Department of Justice and Garland to go after former President Donald Trump, who was widely expected to become Biden’s 2024 opponent. The famously conflict-averse Garland finally relented and put together a special counsel team heavily focused on Cooney and his extreme theories.

Democrat activists have cheered the special counsel for its aggressive actions against Trump, including a shocking raid on his Mar-a-Lago home, exhaustive investigations into communications and finances of Trump and many of his associates, and relentless pushes for courts to rush judgments ahead of the November elections.

Cooney and Smith’s approach has been less successful outside Democrat conversations. “It’s almosthard to believe how comprehensively the hubris and zealotry of anti-Donald Trump lawfare have blown up in their practitioners’ faces,” wrote The Washington Post’s Jason Willick after one major defeat. “Not only did the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling in Trump v. United States create new and enduring presidential immunities against criminal prosecution, but italso eviscerated the fiction of an ‘independent’ Justice Departmentand even inadvertently threw the validity of Trump’s New York hush money conviction into question.”

Left-wing media outlets such as Talking Points Memo have praised Cooney, noting that he was a partisan activist in college. Cooney, who was president of the College Democrats at Notre Dame University, wrote a column in the school newspaper that regularly praised President Bill Clinton and criticized Independent Counsel Ken Starr and his investigation of Clinton.Cooney once wrote of Starr as a “partisan political hit-man” for investigating Clintonand complained about the $30 million price tag of the investigation. He lamented the country’s “insatiable craving for controversy and scandal” regarding Clinton and worried it would destroy the country.

HTTPS://THEFEDERALIST.COM/2024/07/26/JACK-SMITHS-ANTI-TRUMP-DEPUTY-EXCORIATED-FOR-INAPPROPRIATE-BEHAVIOR-AT-DOJ/

Why is this guy still employed by the DOJ?