Roger Stone, a former advisor to President Trump, was indicted in January of last year for process crimes stemming from the Mueller investigation. He was convicted in November, and the prosecution’s sentencing recommendation was for seven to nine years behind bars, a sentence deemed by many, including Trump, to be excessive.
In the wake of the sentencing turmoil, the jury foreperson, Tomeka Hart, took to Facebook to “stand up for” the prosecutors. In so doing, she attracted sufficient attention that her anti-Trump social media posts, including some related to the Stone case before she was on the jury, were located.
These revelations, in turn, set off an avalanche of allegations of her bias, particularly due to her role as jury foreperson. Stone has requested a new trial, though the impetus for and contents of this request are not yet known.
Former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart revealed Wednesday that she was the foreperson of the jury that convicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone on obstruction charges last year — and soon afterward, her history of Democratic activism and a string of her anti-Trump, left-wing social media posts came to light.Hart even posted specifically about the Stone case before she was selected to sit on the jury, as she retweeted an argument mocking those who considered Stone’s dramatic arrest in a predawn raid by a federal tactical team to be excessive force. She also suggested President Trump and his supporters are racist and praised the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which ultimately led to Stone’s prosecution.. . . . The drama began when Hart confirmed to CNN and other media organizations Wednesday that she had written a Facebook post supporting the Justice Department prosecutors in the Stone case who abruptly stepped down from their posts on Tuesday, saying she “can’t keep quiet any longer.” The prosecutors apparently objected after senior DOJ officials overrode their recommendation to Jackson that Stone face up to 9 years in prison.”I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis — the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial,” Hart wrote in the post. “It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice.”
Following her post, revelations about her political beliefs and history, as well as her apparent anti-Trump, anti-Stone bias surfaced.
Fox News continues:
Independent journalist Mike Cernovich, not CNN, then first reported that a slew of Hart’s other publicly available Twitter and Facebook posts readily suggested a strong political bias. Some of Hart’s posts were written as Stone’s trial was in progress.Hart, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012, quoted someone in an August 2017 tweet referring to Trump as a member of the KKK.In January 2019, she retweeted a post by pundit Bakari Sellers, who noted that “Roger Stone has y’all talking about reviewing use of force guidelines,” before suggesting that racism was the reason for all the attention Stone’s arrest had received from conservatives.. . . . In August 2019, Hart called all Trump supporters “racist.””Gotta love it!” Hart wrote on Jan. 13, 2018, in response to a news report that a vulgarity had been projected onto the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.. . . . Most of Hart’s posts were from before she was selected to sit on the Stone jury late 2019. But, on Nov. 15, 2019 — the day she voted to convict Stone on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress — Hart tweeted two “heart” emojis, followed by two pump-fist emojis.(None of Stone’s charges accused him of engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Russia or any other actors concerning election interference; instead, his offenses related to his statements concerning his contacts with WikiLeaks and others.)
It is as yet unclear how much prosecutors or the defense team knew about Hart’s activism and anti-Trump, anti-Stone social media posts.
Politico reports that Stone has requested a new trial.
Roger Stone, the longtime confidant of Donald Trump whose criminal conviction angered the president and led to the turmoil engulfing the Justice Department, is making another bid for a new trial.The move by Stone’s defense team was disclosed by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in an order Friday, but the motion itself remains secret.
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