The Roger Stone sentencing memo debacle of early 2020 feels so long ago now and so insignificant considering what followed soon after, but one of the prosecutors who resigned from the case has landed on his feet. Former Mueller probe prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, also a former clerk for Merrick Garland, is moving on to the Attorney General’s Office in the District of Columbia.
Kravis has joined Attorney General Karl Racine’s (D) office as Special Counsel for Public Corruption. The biographical information in Kravis’s introduction included a noticeable and noticed shot at the DOJ [emphasis ours]:
Prior to joining OAG, Mr. Kravis served as the Deputy Chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. As Deputy Chief, responsible for overseeing the Office’s public corruption matters, Mr. Kravis helped to successfully prosecute Roger Stone for obstruction of Congress and related offenses. He resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office over the Department of Justice’s handling of the Stone sentencing memo. Mr. Kravis, a former law clerk to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, previously worked as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, where he received the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Performance for his work prosecuting a high-ranking federal official for a racketeering conspiracy and related offenses.
Racine said in a statement that his new hire is “one of our country’s most respected prosecutors.”
“He has earned his exceptional reputation for ethically and successfully prosecuting public corruption cases,” Racine said.
Kravis, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C., was one of four Stone prosecutors to swiftly resign from the case after the DOJ decided to intervene and call foul on its own prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for the convicted long-time Trump confidant. Kravis left the DOJ entirely.
That was in early February, days after President Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal. The ensuing outrage from more than 1,000 former DOJ officials who argued that a Trump pal got special treatment, Attorney General William Barr’s damage control interview, and the Stone juror controversy were all over the news for a week or two before the coronavirus pandemic became the focus of daily life in America.
Last week, Roger Stone’s bid for a new trial was denied. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson referred to that bid as a “tower of indignation” devoid of substance.
Correction: this story initially referred to Racine as the District Attorney when he is in fact the Attorney General of the District of Columbia. To be clear, Kravis has joined the Attorney General’s Office.
[Image MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty/Images]
Follow Law&Crime:
