WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rebuked Attorney General William Barr on Thursday for his role in reducing the proposed sentence of Trump associate Roger Stone earlier this week.

“A.G. Barr has deeply damaged the rule of law by withdrawing the DOJ’s sentencing recommendation, the act of interference in Trump’s retribution against [the] lead attorney in the Stone case,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference.

Pelosi called Barr a “sad disappointment to our country” and said that he has “stooped to such levels.” She was referring to the Justice Department’s decision to overrule career prosecutors and propose a reduction in the sentence for Stone. The reversal, announced Tuesday, prompted all four prosecutors to withdraw from the criminal case.

“The American people deserve better,” Pelosi said. “This is not what America is about. It is so wrong.”

She also blasted President Donald Trump on Thursday for demonstrating “once again, that he has no respect for the rule of law” by “engaging in political interference” in the sentencing of Stone.

Mary Anne Trump (née MacLeod, Scottish Gaelic: Màiri Anna NicLeòid; May 10, 1912 – August 7, 2000) was the mother of Donald Trump, and the wife of real estate developer Fred Trump. Born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, she immigrated to the United States in 1930 and became a naturalized citizen in 1942.[3] She raised five children with her husband and engaged in philanthropic activities in the New York area.[4]

Early life[edit]

Mary Anne MacLeod was born in a pebbledash croft house owned by her father since 1895 in Tong on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland.[2] Local historians and genealogists have described properties in this community at the time as “indescribably filthy” and characterized by “human wretchedness”.[5][6] The outbreak of World War I weakened its economy and male population.[2]

Raised in a Scottish Gaelic-speaking household, Mary was the youngest of ten children born to Malcolm (1866–1954) and Mary MacLeod (née Smith; 1867–1963).[7] Her father was a crofter, fisherman and compulsory officer at Mary’s school.[2][3][8][9] English was her second language, which she learned at the school she attended until secondary school.[2]

Her paternal grandparents were Alexander MacLeod and Ann MacLeod; her maternal grandparents were Donald Smith and Mary MacAulay. They were from the locations of Vatisker and South Lochs,[10] and some of the family’s generations had suffered in the Highland Clearances.[11]

Immigration to the United States[edit]

With several sisters having already established themselves there,[9] Mary Anne MacLeod may have first visited the United States for a short stay in December 1929. She was issued immigration visa number 26698 at Glasgow on February 17, 1930.[8] On May 2, MacLeod left Glasgow on board the RMS Transylvania arriving in New York City on May 11 (one day after her 18th birthday). She declared she intended to become a U.S. citizen and would be staying permanently in America.[3][8][9] She was one of tens of thousands of young Scots who left for the United States or Canada during this period, Scotland having suffered badly the consequences of the Clearances and World War I.[10][11] The alien passenger list of the Transylvania lists her occupation as a domestic worker.[2][12]

Fred Trump, c. 1950

Arriving in the U.S. with $50 (equivalent to $765 in 2019), MacLeod lived with her older sister Christina Matheson on Long Island and worked as a domestic servant for at least four years.[3][8][9] One of these jobs appears to have been as a nanny for a well-to-do family in a New York suburb, but the position was eliminated due to economic difficulties caused by the Great Depression.[10] As one account has put it, she “started life in America as a dirt-poor servant escaping the even worse poverty of her native land.”[8] Having obtained a U.S. Re-entry Permit—only granted to immigrants intending to stay and gain citizenship[8][9]—she returned to Scotland on the SS Cameronia on September 12, 1934.[13] She was recorded as living in New York by April 1935 in the 1940 U.S. Census.[13]

Though the 1940 census form filed by Mary Anne and her husband Fred Trump stated that she was a naturalized citizen, she did not actually become one until March 10, 1942.[3][8][9] However, there is no evidence that she violated any immigration laws prior to her naturalization, as she frequently traveled internationally and was afterwards able to re-enter the U.S.[14] MacLeod returned to her home area in Scotland often during the course of her life and spoke Gaelic when she did.[10]

Marriage, family and activities[edit]

In the 1930s, while MacLeod was living with her sister in Queens, she met Fred Trump at a party;[3] on a subsequent visit to Scotland she told her family that she had met her future husband. They married at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on January 11, 1936,[15] with George Arthur Buttrick officiating. The wedding reception for 25 guests was held at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.[9] They honeymooned in Atlantic City, New Jersey.[15] On April 5, 1937, she gave birth to their first child, Maryanne Trump Barry, followed by Frederick Christ Trump Jr. (1938–1981), Elizabeth Trump Grau (born 1942), Donald Trump (born 1946), and Robert Trump (born 1948).[3][8][9] The final birth led to an emergency hysterectomy, which she barely survived.[2]