Yes, it is. The Inspector General investigated this. You don't want an independent, internal Inspector General to be able to investigate issues within the department? You don't want people making charging and sentencing decisions within DoJ based on past precedent, instead of the political desires of whoever is running the case (or in the case of a unitary executive, the President--perhaps a President Trump)?
And Cooney
should have been checked, as he was, w/r/t the Stone sentencing:
"Cooney supervised a team of four attorneys who prosecuted Stone for what the government successfully
argued in front of a Washington, D.C., jury were lies and obstruction during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign officials. . . .
The Fraud and Public Corruption (FPC) team sought an unprecedented sentence of seven to nine years in prison for Stone, dramatically beyond what others convicted of similar crimes faced. When developing that sentencing goal, the team by its own admission thought the “closest analogue” to the Stone conviction was that of Scooter Libby, a target of a previous special counsel in a highly controversial prosecution. Libby’s proposed sentencing range
was 30-37 months and he was sentenced to 30 months, which was derided as “
excessive” by former President George W. Bush.
Yet the Cooney team larded up the Stone sentencing memo with every escalatory adjustment it could find, however disputable, to achieve a much harsher sentence and treat Stone differently than the Justice Department treats other defendants.
As soon as Cooney’s supervisors saw what he and his team had planned, “t
hey all agreed that the sentencing recommendation was too high” and expressed grave concern about the situation. Interim U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea, who had started on the job just that week, said he “
had never seen [perjury] cases produce a sentence that high, and that he was aware of many violent crimes that did not result in sentences ‘anywhere near’ the sentence the team was recommending for Stone,” according to the report. He noted that the escalatory adjustments were arguably made in error, in at least one case, and that the guidance was completely “out of whack” relative to other cases. Further, Stone was a “first-time offender, older than most offenders, and convicted of a nonviolent crime,” and “c
omparable cases” were sentenced around two to three years."
If you are interested in checking govt power to lard up sentences on the accused (that used to be a pretty normal position for us on the left), then this is something that should be important to you.
[If it needs to be said, I consider Stone a pariah and a loathsome figure and no one in polite society should engage with him]