Barr bemoans Trump tweets

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s prolific social media presence may cause problems for the Justice Department. “I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Attorney General William Barr said about the president during an interview with ABC News on Thursday. “To have public statements and tweets made about the department, about people in the department or men and women here, about cases pending in the department, and about judges before whom we have cases make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Did he have a specific tweet in mind? The Justice Department sparked a firestorm this week by reversing prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations for Trump associate Roger Stone after the president tweeted about the case. The department dialed down the requested sentence, which was seven to nine years behind bars, but Barr denied accusations from Democrats that it was in response to the president’s tweet. Barr will testify about the reduction before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31.

Trump tweeted on Friday that he never asked Barr to change anything in a criminal case, but “this doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!”

Dig deeper: Read Lynde Langdon’s report in The Sift about the ousting of Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose relationship with the president soured over time.