WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors are ready to tell Congress on Wednesday that Roger Stone, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was given special treatment ahead of his sentence because of his relationship with the president.

Aaron Zelinsky, a Justice Department career prosecutor working on cases as part of the investigation of special adviser Robert Mueller, including the case against Stone, will say that he was firmly told that political considerations affected the handling of the case, according to testimony. released by the Parliamentary Judiciary Committee. The panel summoned Zelinksy and John Elias, a career official in the department’s antitrust division, as part of their investigation of the politicization of the department under Attorney General William Barr.

Zelinsky, one of four lawyers who came out of Stone’s case after the department canceled their sentencing recommendations, said in prepared testimony that monitors at the office where he worked said that “Stone was treated differently from other defendants because of his relationship with the President.” He plans to say that the US attorney acting at the time, Timothy Shea, “received heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to give Stone a chance.” He did not say who put the pressure.

The Department of Justice did not immediately comment.

Before Stone’s February 20 sentence, the Justice Department leadership changed the sentence recommendation just hours after Trump tweeted his displeasure at the recommendation of up to nine years in prison, saying it was too harsh. Stone was later sentenced to more than three years in prison plus a two-year probation and a $ 20,000 fine.

Barr said that the president’s tweet had no role in the change. He said he ordered a new filing a few hours before the president’s tweet because he was caught red-handed by an initial sentence recommendation and believed it was excessive based on the facts of the case. Submitting a new one is “the right decision based on services,” he told AP.

According to his prepared testimony, Zelinsky will explain after learning from the media that the Department of Justice plans to override the trial team’s recommendation for punishment, something which he thinks is unusual because the department’s conventional practice does not comment on cases. Even though the U.S. Prosecutor’s office initially saying the report was false, the team was then notified that a new punishment memorandum would be issued that would see a lighter sentence for Stone.

“We repeatedly asked to see the new memorandum before it was submitted. Our request was refused, “Zelinsky said. “We were not informed of the content or substance of the submission, or even who wrote it. We were told that a potential draft submission attacked us personally. “

Zelinsky said he was also told that the US official who acted gave Stone a very good treatment because he was “afraid of the President.”

Stone was found guilty of seven counts of accusations accusing him of lying to Congress, damaging witnesses and obstructing parliamentary investigations whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 general election.

In a separate testimony issued by the committee, Elias plans to elaborate on an antitrust investigation which he said began over career staff objections. He said he asked the department’s inspector general to investigate “whether these are abuses of authority, wasting funds, and mismanagement.”