President calls Stone juror biased
US President Donald Trump yesterday injected new political drama into the legal debate over whether Roger Stone deserves a new trial, tweeting during a hearing in the matter that the jury forewoman who voted to convict his longtime friend and confidant was “totally biased” and seeming to suggest the judge was as well.
Trump’s comments came as US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had rebuked him and others over their attacks on the juror, and it seemed to put the President at odds with his own Justice Department, which argued against Stone’s bid for new legal proceedings.
Jackson ultimately ended the hearing without a decision after taking testimony from three jurors on the panel — including the forewoman.
Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has warned him publicly and privately to stop tweeting about Justice Department criminal cases, though Trump proved again that the advice has fallen on deaf ears.
“There has rarely been a juror so tainted as the forewoman in the Roger Stone case,” Trump wrote.
“Look at her background. She never revealed her hatred of ‘Trump’ and Stone. She was totally biased, as is the judge. Roger wasn’t even working on my campaign. Miscarriage of justice. Sad to watch!”
Minutes later, Trump seemed to add an attack on the judge, retweeting a link that Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano had tweeted with the headline, “Roger Stone judge’s bias may have jeopardised entire trial: former Democratic Party lawyer”.
A jury convicted Stone in November of lying during testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 to conceal his central role in the Trump campaign’s efforts to learn about Democratic computer files hacked by Russia and made public by WikiLeaks to damage Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Stone was sentenced to three years and four months in prison.
Just days ago, Jackson slapped down Stone’s request that she be disqualified from the case, writing that it “appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the Court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words ‘judge’ and ‘biased’ in it”.
The juror has identified herself as Tomeka Hart, a former president of the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress. At issue were her responses to a questionnaire she filled out before her jury service, and her social media posts about Trump and Stone.
The hearing was only partially public after Jackson expressed concern about jurors’ safety following comments from Trump and others.
“This is indisputably a highly publicised case in which the President himself shone a spotlight on the jury,” Jackson said, adding: “Any attempt to harass or intimidate jurors is completely antithetical to our system of justice.”
A Justice Department declined to comment on Trump’s tweets.