Matt Zapotosky:

Yes, the Justice Department also denies that there was any contact between the White House and them in the last day or two, when this all transpired.

Here's our best understanding so far. In recent days, there had been great argument internally about what to do with the Stone sentencing recommendation, with kind of these line prosecutors, these guys who tried to withdraw from the case today, advocating for a guideline sentence, seven to nine years, and their supervisors pushing back.

We don't know exactly why they were pushing back. I think it's fair to assume now that it was probably because of pressure from Justice Department leadership.

What happens then is very unclear. The Justice Department claims that they were sort of blindsided by the recommendation that is filed. There's a lot of reason to be skeptical about that, given that they presumably would be engaged in discussions about what was about to be filed. But they claim they're blindsided by this seven-to-nine-year recommendation that is filed yesterday.

So, then, today, they say publicly — a senior Justice Department official says to a lot of reporters: Hey, we're going to undo this. We were surprised by this recommendation. We're going to undo it.

And, as you reported, that's exactly what they did. They didn't say specifically, we think it should be half of seven to nine years, we think it should be three-quarters. They just said they think it should be less.

But it's a remarkable, a stunning rebuke of the career prosecutors who by that point had all moved to withdraw themselves from the case.