WASHINGTON, D.C. — Attorney General William Barr was called out by two of his employees on Wednesday who accused him of interfering in cases on behalf of his interests and President Trump’s.

“The Department of Justice treated Roger Stone differently from everyone else,” Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland, said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “I was told that the department cut Roger Stone a break because of his relationship to the president.”


Zelinsky was once a prosecutor on the case of Trump confidant Roger Stone, but he withdrew from it earlier this year after higher-ups at the Justice Department recommended a lighter prison sentence for Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress.

The other whistleblower, DOJ Attorney John Elias, accused Barr of interfering in two antitrust cases having to do with marijuana businesses and car emissions.

Democrats said the testimony paints a clear picture of the attorney general.

“He is the president’s fixer,” Representative Jerry Nadler (D-New York) said. “He has shown us that there is one set of rules for the president’s friends and another set of rules for the rest of us.”

But Ohio Republicans Jim Jordan (R, 4th Congressional District) and Steve Chabot (R, 1st Congressional District) led the defense of Barr. They argued the attorney general is acting appropriately because they say Democrats have been treating President Trump unfairly since before he was even elected.

“The politics was in the previous administration,” Jordan, the top Republican on the committee, said. “Bill Barr is doing the Lord’s work, trying to clean it up, so that it doesn’t happen again.”

Chabot echoed him: “[Democrats are] still grieving that they failed to remove him from office through their phony impeachment debacle, and now they’re targeting administration officials, in this case, Attorney General Barr, for merely acting within the scope of their duties.”

Democrats have also been critical of Barr’s decision last Friday night to remove the U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, who had prosecuted — and was still investigating — some of the president’s associates.

It was a messy series of events with Barr first saying Geoffrey Berman was stepping down; then Berman responded that he was not; then Barr eventually said the president agreed to fire him.

In an interview before Wednesday’s hearing, Chabot told me he wasn’t phased by that situation or what the whistleblowers were alleging.

He said he has full confidence in Barr.

“If you want to talk about politicizing a Justice Department, that was clearly the case, in many instances, under the previous administration,” Chabot said. “I think what Attorney General Barr is trying to do is clean up that mess. I think he’s a man of the highest integrity.”

No Ohio Democrats serve on the House Judiciary Committee, but they’ve all been critical of Attorney General Barr’s time in office.