Harry Litman is a professor of Constitutional law at UCLA. Now a lawyer in private practice, he served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Anthony Kennedy from 1987-89. A former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California as well as the Western District of Pennsylvania, he also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice for five years.

Litman’s reaction to the Justice Department’s repudiation yesterday of the sentencing recommendation made by the DOJ team that prosecuted Trump ally and co-conspirator Roger Stone, and the stunningly abrupt withdrawal of the four prosecutors on that legal team that followed this repudiation, is set forth in today’s Washington Post.

Titled “The Justice Department’s reputation is on life support,” Litman’s editorial is nothing short of blistering. His main point is that by all appearances what occurred yesterday—the action of a rogue Justice Department in fulfilling a demand by the president for political leniency to someone who can legitimately be described as co-conspirator with that president to the commission of federal crimes-- cannot be permitted to stand in a functioning democracy.