AP FACT CHECK: Trump's exaggerations on Roger Stone sentence

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is misrepresenting the Justice Department's handling of the legal case of his confidant, Roger Stone.

He's suggesting rampant bias in the department's initial recommendation to a federal court that Stone be sentenced between seven and nine years in prison, claiming that all four prosecutors are former members of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia team. That's not true.

Trump also says the proposed sentence was put forth in secret. He's wrong on that, too.

The president's exaggerations came in an extraordinary week in which Justice Department leaders overruled Stone's prosecutors following a tweet complaint by Trump and lowered the amount of recommended prison time. Attorney General William Barr nevertheless publicly scolded Trump, saying the president's tweets were making it “impossible" for him to do his job.

Meanwhile, Trump spread a variety of distortions at a New Hampshire rally, including about the border wall and voter fraud, and still more in other venues. The release of his proposed budget prompted Democrats to wrongly accuse him of undermining Medicare.

A look at the past week's political rhetoric and reality:

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

TRUMP: “Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people?) who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started?" — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He's incorrect on several fronts.

Four lawyers who prosecuted Stone did quit the case after Justice Department leaders took the extraordinary step of reducing their recommended sentence. Only two, however, were members of Mueller’s team.

There was nothing secret about the proposed...