The federal judge handling Roger Stone’s criminal case rejected the GOP operative’s request for a new trial, a newly unsealed court ruling shows.
Judge Amy Jackson, the Obama appointee who handled Stone’s case for nearly a year and presided over the two-week jury trial last November, rejected Stone’s claim that he was entitled to a new trial following his defense team’s allegations of “bias” regarding one of the jurors.
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According to the judge’s ruling, unsealed on Wednesday afternoon, Stone’s argument that a new trial was warranted hinged on two main claims about why the juror, whose identity was concealed in the filing, should have been removed. The first was because the juror is employed at a division of the Internal Revenue Service, which Stone claimed “works hand-in-hand with the Department of Justice prosecuting criminal tax matters.” The second was because Stone claimed the juror “violated the court’s order to avoid media coverage of the case.”
The judge rejected both of these claims, arguing that Stone’s defense team “has not presented grounds for a new trial” under the appropriate rules nor shown “any reason to believe there has been a serious miscarriage of justice.”
The court ruling adds to the high drama surrounding the Stone case, which unfolded after Stone made the request.
Federal prosecutors told the court Monday they were recommending Stone receive up to nine years behind bars. After Trump tweeted late that night that he “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice,” the Justice Department backtracked to a more lenient recommendation on Tuesday, and the four main prosecutors on the case, including three who were members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, quit.
Democrats have called for investigations into the Justice Department’s actions.
Trump also criticized Jackson on Tuesday.
“Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?” Trump tweeted. “How did she treat Crooked Hillary Clinton? Just asking!”
Jackson presided over a number of other spinoff cases from Mueller’s two-year investigation, including against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign deputy-turned-government’s witness Rick Gates, and former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig.
Jackson explained her rejection of Stone’s Hail Mary legal effort at length.
“There was nothing in the juror’s questionnaire or in-court testimony to support the defendant’s assertion that [the juror] works on criminal matters or interacted with the Department of Justice at all, much less that [the juror] works ‘hand-in-hand’ with Justice Department lawyers prosecuting criminal tax cases,” Jackson said.
The judge noted that, despite the juror’s employment appearing on the juror’s questionnaire, the defense never included that juror on any of its lists of potential jurors to strike from the case despite ample opportunities to do so in September, as well as in November, when members of the witness pool were questioned prior to the trial beginning.
Jackson further said that Stone’s claim that the juror “did not follow the court’s instructions not to read about the case” was “also not sufficient to warrant a new trial.”
During questioning, the juror testified that someone “showed” him or her a small article about the case, but Jackson said it was never established that the juror read the article, only that the article was pointed out. The judge noted that “the defense did not follow up, so there is no additional evidence on this point.”
Even if the juror read the article, the judge said there was no evidence the juror tried to break any rules on purpose and said it was likely that “limited exposure to a single piece in the newspaper was of minimal significance.”
“The court is persuaded that the transgression in this case — if one indeed occurred — was unintentional, and that it had little, if any effect,” Jackson ruled, adding that the juror’s questionnaire and testimony under questioning made her confident that “it was not necessary to strike the juror for alleged bias or for failure to follow the court’s instructions.”
Jackson is scheduled to hand down Stone’s sentence on Feb. 20.
