All four federal prosecutors in Roger Stone’s criminal trial abruptly quit the case Tuesday after Justice Department brass stepped in and called their initial sentencing recommendation of up to nine years behind bars for the President Trump stalwart overly harsh.

Aaron Zelinsky, a special assistant US attorney who served on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, was the first to file that he’d quit the case and was resigning as a federal prosecutor “effective immediately.”

Assistant US Attorney Jonathan Kravis, a trial lawyer in the department’s Public Integrity Section, told the court in a filing that he, too, had resigned.

A third prosecutor, Special Assistant US Attorney Adam Jed, then stepped down from the case, as did Michael J. Marando, another assistant US attorney.

The Justice Department said it wanted a shorter prison sentence for Trump’s longtime pal than the seven to nine years recommended by the prosecutors. That call for leniency came hours after Trump called the sentence request unfair, but did not offer a specific recommendation.

“The defendant committed serious offenses and deserves a sentence of incarceration that is ‘sufficient, but not greater than necessary,’ ” Justice lawyers said in a filing. “Based on the facts known to the government, a sentence of between 87 to 108 months’ imprisonment, however, could be considered excessive and unwarranted. Ultimately, the government defers to the Court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case.”

The president had taken to Twitter to call out prosecutors over their proposed sentence for Stone, the self-proclaimed political “dirty trickster” who was found guilty on charges stemming from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” Trump had tweeted early Tuesday, a day after the court’s sentencing recommendation. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

Stone faces a Feb. 20 sentencing. A jury found him guilty of seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.

Trump said later Tuesday he did not interfere in the case — although he insisted he had “an absolute right” to.

“I stay out of things to a degree that people wouldn’t believe,” he told reporters at the White House.

It was not immediately clear when any filing seeking a lighter sentence would be made in the case being handled by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in federal court in Washington, DC.

“We look forward to reviewing the government’s supplemental filing,” Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, said in an email to Reuters.