White House withdraws nomination of ex-U.S. attorney Jessie Liu to Treasury post
The White House has withdrawn the nomination of former U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu for a top post at the Treasury Department, CBS News has confirmed. Liu was previously the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, where she oversaw the prosecutions of Trump associate Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Liu stepped down from her role as U.S. attorney in late 2019. The Trump administration has yet to give any explanation for withdrawing Liu's name. Her nomination for under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes was sent to the Senate last month.
But news of her withdrawn nomination comes the same day all four government attorneys involved in prosecuting Stone resigned from the case. The government had initially recommended a sentence of seven to nine years for Stone, who stands convicted of of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness. Overnight, the president tweeted his displeasure with the sentencing recommendation, calling it a "miscarriage of justice."
The government said in a court filing Tuesday that recommendation was too harsh, and said it would leave it to the court to decide Stone's fate. The president insists he hasn't spoken with the Justice Department about Stone's sentencing.
A senior Justice Department official called the president's tweet an inconvenient coincidence. The official claimed the fourth and fifth floors of the Justice Department, where department leaders work, found it surprising that the government said the only sentence that would be appropriate for Stone would be seven to nine years, suggesting it was too long.
This is a developing story and will be updated.