The sudden withdrawal of the entire prosecution team assigned to Stone’s case — including two veterans of former special counsel Robert Mueller's office — following the Justice Department’s decision to back away from the government’s original sentencing proposal seemed to embolden and energize Trump. A jubilant president took to Twitter on Tuesday night to celebrate and settle more scores.

“All starting to unravel with the ridiculous 9 year sentence recommendation!” Trump wrote before retweeting a perennial favorite: “DRAIN THE SWAMP!”

The president’s tweets fueled an ongoing furor among Justice Department veterans and Democrats that broke out earlier in the day after the department backed off a recommendation for a lengthy prison term for Stone, a longtime informal political adviser to Trump.

All starting to unravel with the ridiculous 9 year sentence recommendation! https://t.co/6baxv3Lvuk — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020

Jonathan Kravis, the deputy chief of the fraud and public corruption section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, said in a court filing on Tuesday afternoon that he had resigned his government job. Two former prosecutors for Mueller, Aaron Zelinsky and Adam Jed, also notified the court that they were stepping off the case, as did a D.C.-based prosecutor, Michael Marando.

The extraordinary exit of every prosecutor who shepherded the Stone case came one day after they urged that he be sentenced to between about seven and nine years in prison on his conviction on charges of impeding congressional and FBI investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

That prompted Trump to blast federal prosecutors on Twitter just before 2 a.m. Tuesday for urging such a long prison sentence for Stone, the veteran GOP political consultant and provocateur found guilty by a jury last year on seven felony counts brought by Mueller.

"This is a horrible and very unfair situation," Trump wrote. "The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!"

Trump expanded on his view while speaking to reporters late Tuesday afternoon, but he denied that he had asked the Justice Department to change the sentence recommendation.

“I thought the recommendation was ridiculous. I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous,“ the president said. “I thought it was an insult to our country and it shouldn‘t happen.“

He also indicated that he viewed the case against Stone as a vendetta that Mueller‘s prosecutors carried on even after his departure last May.

“These were the same Mueller people that put everybody through hell and I think it's a disgrace,“ the president said. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.“

Later, Trump used Twitter to take a swipe at the judge scheduled to sentence Stone, Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee who has overseen several other Mueller-related cases.

“Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure? How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!“ Trump wrote.

While Jackson revoked Manafort‘s bail over allegations of witness tampering, she did not order him put in solitary confinement. U.S. Marshals personnel made a decision to isolate the former Trump adviser from the general inmate population because of concerns about his safety, the judge has said.

And Trump on Tuesday afternoon escalated his vendetta against Vindman, one of the prime targets of the president's still-emerging revenge tour.

Speaking to reporters at a veterans event, Trump said the military will likely look at disciplinary action against Vindman, just days after the National Security Council official was ousted from the White House after giving damaging testimony during the House impeachment hearings.

“That’s going to be up to the military, we’ll have to see, but if you look at what happened, they’re going to certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that,” Trump said in response to a follow-up question about what he meant when he said, “the military can handle him.”

Trump, without providing evidence or specific examples, accused Vindman of reporting “very inaccurate things” about the “perfect” call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Around the same time Trump was speaking at the White House, the Justice Department submitted a revised sentencing filing that offered no specific recommendation for Stone‘s sentence, but said a term on the order of seven to nine years “could be considered excessive and unwarranted.“

“The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months’ imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances,“ the prosecution‘s new submission said. “Ultimately, the government defers to the Court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case.“

Congressional Democrats erupted in outrage over the Stone episode.

“Coupled with the president’s blatant retaliation against those who helped expose his wrongdoing, the Trump administration poses the gravest threat to the rule of law in America in a generation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter on Tuesday to the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, requesting an investigation into the reversal.

A senior Justice Department official said on Tuesday afternoon that department leaders were taken by surprise by the initial recommendation contained in the prosecution‘s Monday evening filing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to revise the submission was unrelated to Trump's tweet and took place prior to the president’s sending the message.

“The department was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the Stone case last night,“ said the official. “That recommendation was not the recommendation that had been briefed to the department. The department found the recommendation to be extreme and excessive and grossly disproportionate to Stone’s offenses and the department will clarify its position in court later today.“

The official declined to elaborate on who in the Justice Department hierarchy was aware of the actual contents of the recommendation submitted to Jackson, who is set to sentence Stone on Feb. 20. However, the official insisted that the White House played no role in the reversal and that there was no contact between department leaders and Trump about Stone's potential sentence prior to the decision.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to address questions about whether the prosecution team was dismissed or quit in protest.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder praised two of the prosecutors who withdrew from the Stone case.

“AUSA‘s Kravis and Zelinsky have shown more guts — and an adherence to the rule of law — than too many now serving in Washington,” he wrote on Twitter. “What Main DOJ is trying to do — and at whose behest? — is unprecedented, wrong and ultimately dangerous. DOJ independence is critical.”

Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone, said in a statement: “We have read with interest the new reporting on Roger Stone’s case. Our sentencing memo outlined our position on the recommendation made yesterday by the government. We look forward to reviewing the government’s supplemental filing.“

Other Stone allies hailed Tuesday's developments.

"Isn’t it lovely when the swamp drains itself?" Stone backer and GOP communications adviser Michael Caputo tweeted.

Isn’t it lovely when the swamp drains itself? Zelinsky is Beelzebub. 👿 https://t.co/1doCgFWo6N — Michael R. Caputo 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@MichaelRCaputo) February 11, 2020

After the closure of Mueller‘s office last May, Stone‘s prosecution was taken over by lawyers in the U.S. Attorney‘s Office in Washington, who handled the weeklong jury trial last November in which Stone was convicted on five counts of making false statements to investigators, one count of obstructing Congress and one count of witness tampering.

At the time of the trial, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia was Jessie Liu, but she was replaced in that post last month on an interim basis by a former top aide to Attorney General Bill Barr, Tim Shea. Shea‘s name appeared on Monday's filing, although such filings are typically prepared by the line prosecutors on the case.

Liu also appeared to become a casualty of the latest developments in the Stone case, as the White House abruptly withdrew her nomination as the Treasury Department‘s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, according to a former Trump administration official and another person familiar with the situation.

It was not immediately clear why Trump pulled her nomination, but her confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee had been scheduled for Thursday morning. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the move.

A former Trump administration official said on Tuesday night: “It was unusual to ask her to step down ahead of her confirmation.“

Even before the new and extraordinary events in the Stone case, Liu was virtually certain to face questions at the hearing about her office‘s handling of various politically sensitive cases and investigations, including those of Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former the former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.

The prosecution‘s initial proposal for a lengthy prison term for Stone was driven by the witness tampering charge and by allegations that Stone threatened violence in order to discourage an associate, Randy Credico, from cooperating with Congress and the FBI. Stone insisted that the messages — including such colorful missives as “Prepare to die cocksucker“ — were part of outlandish banter between the two.

Credico said in a letter to the judge last month that he didn‘t think Stone posed a physical threat, but acknowledged during the trial that he was concerned that Stone‘s language could prompt other people to act out.

Stone‘s statements alleged to threaten or encourage violence upped the prosecution‘s calculation of the sentencing guidelines in Stone‘s case by about four or five years, according to the government‘s filing Monday. Stone‘s defense calculates the guidelines to call for a 15- to 21-month sentence.

Trump has the power to see that Stone serves no prison time by issuing a pardon, as many of Stone‘s supporters are urging. The president rebuffed a question about a pardon on Tuesday.

Jed and Kravis offered no hint of the mushrooming controversy during the more than two hours they spent in court on Tuesday handling another case that emerged from the Mueller probe: the prosecution of a Russian company accused of using social media activity and advertising to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential contest. That case is set for trial in April.

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Zelinsky's filing with the court said he was giving up his temporary post as a special assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland is apparently returning to his job in the state. Jed and Marando included no information about their status beyond that they were withdrawing from the Stone case.

Late Friday afternoon, the acting chief of the criminal division in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, John Crabb, formally notified the court that he was entering the case. His and Shea‘s names are the only ones in the signature block of the revised sentencing recommendation.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.