The federal judge who presided over the Roger Stone trial and handed down a 40-month prison sentence for the self-described “dirty trickster” shot down his request for a new trial on Thursday.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama-appointee who handled multiple cases spun off from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, issued an 81-page opinion denying Stone’s motion for a new trial following allegations the juror foreperson misled the court to conceal a bias toward the longtime associate and friend of President Trump.
“The defendant has not shown that the juror lied; nor has he shown that the supposedly disqualifying evidence could not have been found through the exercise of due diligence at the time the jury was selected,” Jackson said, adding: “The motion is a tower of indignation, but at the end of the day, there is little of substance holding it up.”
The controversy surrounding juror Tomeka Hart, a former Democratic congressional candidate, kicked into high gear in February when it was revealed she shared anti-Trump posts on social media, which resulted in Stone’s lawyers filing a motion for a retrial prior to his sentencing.
“It is my strong opinion that the forewoman of the jury, the woman who was in charge of the jury, is totally tainted,” Trump said after Stone’s 40-month sentence was handed down.
Hart tweeted about Trump dozens of times and was critical of the president and his supporters, with some comments regarding people under scrutiny in Mueller’s investigation. Hart’s tweets included a few about Russian election interference and allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.
“The trial is over, and a verdict — which was based largely on the defendant’s own texts and emails, and was amply supported by this undisputed evidence — has been returned,” Jackson said Thursday. “At this point, it is incumbent upon the defendant to demonstrate that the juror lied, and that a truthful answer would have supplied grounds for the Court to strike her for cause. Also, a defendant seeking a new trial must establish that the information presented in his motion could not have been discovered earlier through the exercise of due diligence.”
Stone was arrested in January 2019 and was later found guilty on five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference about his alleged outreach to WikiLeaks, one count that he “corruptly obstructed” the congressional investigation, and another for attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness, radio host Randy Credico.
In late February, after Stone’s sentencing, Hart was brought in to testify about her jury questionnaire and her time leading the jurors during the November trial.
Stone’s team focused intently on question 23 in the September 2019 jury questionnaire, which read: “Have you written or posted anything for public consumption about the defendant, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, or the investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller?”
“I can’t remember if I did, but I may have shared an article on Facebook,” Hart wrote in response last year. “Honestly, not sure.”
Stone’s attorney, Seth Ginsberg, argued that Hart’s answers were “misleading if not deliberately false.”
It doesn’t appear Hart tweeted about Stone directly, though she did retweet a Jan. 30, 2019, tweet from CNN commentator Bakari Sellers criticizing Republicans unhappy about Stone’s arrest in early 2019.
When pressed by Ginsberg, Hart said she did not clearly remember posting about the Trump-Russia controversy when she answered the juror questionnaire and claimed she thought the question was narrowly “in terms of Roger Stone.”
“As I sat there on Sept. 12, that day, I honestly could not remember … I said, ‘I’m honestly not sure’ … It’s why I didn’t check yes or no because I didn’t want to appear deceptive,” Hart said. “When I read question 23, I read all of that to mean about Roger Stone.”
Jackson said Thursday that “the evidence the defense claims was critical was never ‘concealed’ — it was a few clicks of a mouse away.” The judge said Stone’s defense team “made a strategic choice not to look for social media information” and “none of the seven lawyers or the two jury consultants on the defense team performed the rudimentary Googling that located this set of Facebook and Twitter posts.” Jackson noted that Stone’s team did not bother asking Hart about her social media usage when they had the chance before she was seated on the jury.
“While the social media communications may suggest that the juror has strong opinions about certain people or issues, they do not reveal that she had an opinion about Roger Stone, which is the opinion that matters,” Jackson concluded.
Two other members of the jury, referred to only as “Juror A” and “Juror B,” also testified in February.
Juror A said, “There was a little bit of impatience at times during deliberations, but we were able to slow ourselves down” when weighing Stone’s guilt. Juror A said, “several people, including the forewoman,” emphasized the importance of taking their time and remembering the presumption of innocence.
Juror B separately echoed these comments, saying there was a time during deliberations when “most of us agreed that he was guilty,” but “it was the foreman that insisted that … we needed to examine” one of the charges more closely.
“The foreperson held the government to its burden of proof, and the foreperson ensured that the jury took its time and considered each count individually in light of the evidence in the case, the jury instructions, and the presumption of innocence,” Jackson said on Thursday.
Prosecutors told the court in February they recommended Stone receive up to nine years behind bars. But, after Trump tweeted he “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice,” the Justice Department suggested a less severe sentence. The four line prosecutors on the case withdrew as the department walked back the “unduly high” sentence recommendation.
Attorney General William Barr denied the president’s tweet influenced the Justice Department’s actions, but Barr did complain that such tweets make “it impossible for me to do my job.”
“The prosecution was and is righteous,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb said during Stone’s sentencing hearing.
Jackson said Thursday that Stone has 14 days to file an appeal of his conviction, and he must surrender to the Bureau of Prisons when asked.
