Justice Department lawyers on Tuesday retracted a request made by other DOJ attorneys just one day earlier that recommended Roger Stone be sentenced up to nine years in prison, saying such a punishment "could be considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances."

The new DOJ sentencing recommendation landed as all four federal prosecutors who had worked on Stone's trial filed motions to withdraw. One said he was resigning as an assistant U.S. attorney entirely, and another announced his departure from the D.C. attorney's office but remains with the DOJ.

The withdrawals are an apparent rebuke of the DOJ's retraction of the initial sentencing memorandum Monday, which said sentencing Stone to seven to nine years in federal prison "would accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law."

Now, the Justice Department says it will leave the matter of Stone's sentence in U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson's hands.

"Ultimately, the government defers to the court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case," the new filing reads.

Tuesday's five-page memo, signed by interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea of the District of Columbia and acting chief of the criminal division John Crabb Jr., still calls for Stone's incarceration but stands in contrast to the forceful 22-page filing from the original prosecutorial team for Stone on Monday. Crabb filed a notice of appearance in the case in the minutes before it was filed.

"The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months' imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances. The government ultimately defers to the court as to the specific sentence to be imposed," Tuesday's filing states.

The first memo was signed by Shea, a former adviser to Attorney General William Barr, as well as the team of attorneys who led Stone's prosecution in court: Jonathan Kravis, Michael Marando, Aaron Zelinsky and Aaron Jed.

In Monday's sentencing memorandum, the government lawyers said Stone knew exactly what he was doing when he lied to Congress, impeded the House Intelligence Committee's Russia probe and tried to prevent another potential committee witness from testifying.

"Stone's conduct over the past two years shows the low regard in which he holds the House Intelligence Committee's investigation and this very criminal case," they wrote. "That conduct suggests that a period of incarceration is warranted to achieve adequate deterrence."

President Donald Trump criticized the recommendation from his Justice Department as a "miscarriage of justice" in a tweet early Tuesday. And the shift in the DOJ's recommendation, which was made public after the president's tweet, began sparking cries of political bias within the Trump Justice Department.

"The filing was surprising, and we worked over the course of the day to get an amended filing that was more reasonable and consistent" with the department's position, a senior DOJ official said after the new memo was filed.

The senior DOJ official said Tuesday's filing was intended to "correct the department's position" to reflect its belief that a sentence below the guidelines range "could satisfy the interests of justice."

"We just want to be very clear with the court: You should exercise your discretion to impose a sentence that is fair," the senior official said.

"We always have a duty to be candid with the court. So if you file something in good faith and it turns out not to be right … you fix it. That's not unusual."

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Tuesday that the decision to file a new sentencing recommendation was made Monday night, before Trump's tweet went out.

A senior DOJ official said leadership at the Justice Department had been briefed on a different recommendation for Stone than the one filed Monday. The official declined to say what sentence officials were briefed on.

The prosecutors began dropping off the case within hours of the announcement that a new sentencing recommendation would be made.

Zelinsky, a former prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, was the first to file a motion to withdraw from Stone's case, which also showed he was leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. He remains a federal prosecutor with the Maryland attorney's office.

Shortly afterward, career DOJ prosecutor Kravis filed a motion to withdraw, announcing he had resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney. Kravis previously clerked for Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and was an associate White House counsel from 2009 to 2010.

He was also one of the prosecutors for the upcoming trial against Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company charged by Mueller with interfering in the 2016 election. A hearing was held on the case Tuesday morning in D.C. federal court.

Former Mueller prosecutor Jed filed a notice of withdrawal shortly afterward. That filing did not indicate that he has left the Justice Department.

Soon after the new sentencing recommendation came down, Marando became the fourth and final prosecutor to file a notice of withdrawal. That document also did not show that he has left the department.

Before the prosecutors began filing the motions to withdraw, legal experts said in interviews that the change in recommendation for Stone's sentence could undermine the government attorneys' credibility.

"When the Department of Justice seems to be caving into political pressure from the president in a case involving one of the president's own associates, a figure associated with the president's election campaign, it tells the judge as it tells everybody else the Department of Justice can't be trusted to provide impartial and professional recommendations on sentencing," Stanford Law School professor David Sklansky said.

Glenn Kirschner, who previously spent 24 years in the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. including as chief of homicide, said he had worked with Kravis at the office. He called Kravis an "honorable ethical and outstanding prosecutor," and said he may be "collateral damage" of Trump and Barr interfering in the Stone case.

"The whole thing really does make the whole Department of Justice under Bill Barr feel like a satellite office of the White House," Kirschner said. "That's just not the way the system is supposed to operate."

Stone's sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 20.

Stone is represented by a Fort Lauderdale-based team of attorneys, including Bruce Rogow and Robert Buschel. Stone's attorneys in their own filing Monday, said their client does not require incarceration as a part of his sentence, especially when compared with what other people convicted in former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe were sentenced to.

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Trump's Ties to Stone Raise Concerns

Despite the DOJ's statements Tuesday on the timeline to file a different suggestion on what Stone should be sentenced to, some legal experts raised concerns about the change and characterized it as potentially another example of politicization creeping into the Trump Justice Department's actions.

Former DOJ career officials from the civil division have previously described the Trump Justice Department's shift in litigation priorities and stances as posing issues for attorneys working for the department.

Judges also previously blocked DOJ attorneys' attempt to withdraw from litigation over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census after Trump said the administration would still try to include the question on the survey despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against it. Trump ultimately dropped the legal fights.

However, Stone's case is a criminal matter meaning a team of government attorneys from a different part of the DOJ worked on the case, including the two former Mueller prosecutors.

Still, Trump's criticism of Stone's sentence and the announcement of a new sentencing recommendation shortly afterward raised questions about whether there was a political motivation behind the change.

When asked Tuesday on whether the White House influenced the change to help a Trump confidant, a senior DOJ official denied the charge.

"No, it didn't. It's an inconvenient coincidence," the official said, referring to Stone and Trump's relationship. "It really is."

Kirschner, the former prosecutor, said he believed Stone's initial sentencing recommendation was "absolutely heartland appropriate." Kirschner acknowledged there were probably times when he was with the D.C. attorney's office when prosecutors changed their sentencing proposal after meeting with victims's families or after additional information came to light.

But he suggested political motives may have come into play when it comes to the sentence for the longtime Trump ally.

"I find it extremely hard to believe that this was not vetted up through the highest levels of the Department of Justice," Kirschner said.

Sklansky, the Stanford law professor whose work focuses on criminal law and procedure, compared Trump weighing in on Stone's sentencing to President Richard Nixon trying to intervene in the investigations into the Watergate Hotel break-in.

"It's not unheard of for prosecutors to change their sentencing recommendations," Sklansky said. "What is astonishing and alarming is the involvement of the president of the United States in an ongoing criminal proceeding involving somebody who was associated with him and his campaign."

Stone was a one-time adviser for Trump's 2016 campaign, but didn't stay on staff for long. Prosecutors said during Stone's trial that after his departure, Stone remained in contact with top Trump campaign officials, including Trump himself, claiming to know of forthcoming WikiLeaks dumps of hacked Democratic emails.

Stone was indicted and found guilty last year of lying to congressional investigators about the identity of who he claimed was his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He was also found guilty of impeding a congressional investigation and witness tampering.

Douglas Berman, a law professor with Ohio State University whose work focuses on criminal sentencing, said the initially suggested sentence for Stone may well be within federal sentencing guidelines.

"Fundamentally the Justice Department, as a matter of default practice, is always going to advocate for the toughest guideline calculation," Berman said. He, like Stone's attorneys argued in their own sentencing memo, characterized nearly a decade in prison for a man in his late 60s as "over the top and tone deaf in a certain way."

The concept of seeking the toughest sentencing possible under the guidelines was emphasized in a 2017 memo by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

"First, it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense," Sessions wrote. "This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences."

How Jackson, the judge in Stone's case who will ultimately decide on his sentence, will respond to the changed sentencing recommendation and attorney withdrawals is an open question.

Stone's sentencing is scheduled for next week. That means if Jackson does inquire into the change in government lawyers it could delay the proceeding.

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