Roger Stone and the Corruption of Justice - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Roger Stone and the Corruption of Justice
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You can’t make this up.

CNN headlined the story this way:

Stone juror says she ‘stands with’ the prosecutors

The story begins this way:

(CNN) — A juror on the Roger Stone trial said she wants to “stand up” for the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in response to their sentencing recommendation being changed by Department of Justice leadership.

Tomeka Hart said she had remained silent about the case for months out of concern for her safety and “politicizing the matter.”

But the events this week led to her to post on her Facebook account that she “can’t keep quiet any longer.” A copy of the posting was shared with CNN. Hart confirmed to CNN that she wrote the post but did not want to discuss it further.

“I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis — the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial,” she wrote in the post that was shared with CNN. “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.”

Note the phrase that Ms. Hart “shared” a copy of her Facebook posting. What was not shared? Her tweets.

Conservative journalist Mike Cernovich quickly posted an archive of Hart’s tweets. He reported that Hart, the Stone jury foreman no less, was not only a Democratic activist and congressional candidate in 2012; she had also repeatedly tweeted her contempt for, yes indeed, Roger Stone and, but of course, Donald Trump.

Fox News headlined the story this way:

Roger Stone jury foreperson’s anti-Trump social media posts surface after she defends DOJ prosecutors

The story said, in part, this:

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.

Meanwhile, it emerged that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had denied a defense request to strike a potential juror who was Obama-era press official with admitted anti-Trump views — and whose husband worked at the same Justice Department division that handled the probe leading to Stone’s arrest. And, another Stone juror, Seth Cousins, donated to former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and other progressive causes, federal election records reviewed by Fox News show.

Got that? Not only was the jury “foreperson” a left-wing anti-Trump activist, she was out there tweeting her hatred of Roger Stone before she was picked to sit on the jury judging … Roger Stone. And sitting there on that jury with her was an “Obama-era press official with admitted anti-Trump views — and whose husband worked at the same Justice Department division that handled the probe leading to Stone’s arrest.” Not to mention “another Stone juror, Seth Cousins, donated to former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and other progressive causes.”

This wasn’t an impartial jury committed to impartial and blind justice. This was political activists leading a legally disguised witch hunt — and one that had not the slightest intention of being fair to Roger Stone. And the four prosecutors? One was a part of the now-infamous Mueller investigation team that was filled with Hillary Clinton supporters and anti-Trump fanatics. They were nothing more than political anti-Trump activists themselves, demanding a sentence for Roger Stone’s alleged crimes of lying and witness tampering that was twice or more as harsh than sentences handed out to rapists and all manner of other serious crimes.

In other words, the Roger Stone trial wasn’t a trial. It was a political persecution, a vivid example of a corruption of justice.

Over at Fox, the network’s legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano — no Trump fan of late — said that

 [Stone is] absolutely entitled to a new trial with a member of a jury making these types of revelations about the politics involved in the decisions to prosecute him.

What has been done to Roger Stone is a travesty, a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

Even more seriously disturbing is the realization that whether it was James Comey’s FBI or the career bureaucrats in the Justice Department — and for that matter career bureaucrats in the State Department and on the national security council staff in the White House — these were, to a person, people who saw themselves as both smarter than the president and with an inherent right to sabotage the president because they disagreed with his policies.

In the hands of FBI officials and Justice Department prosecutors, this is an exceptionally dangerous abuse of power — and in the case of Roger Stone a glaringly egregious abuse.

To say the least, Attorney General William Barr was well within his rights to call for a lesser penalty for Stone.

Well beyond that, Barr has inherited a corrupt Justice Department that has given vindictive anti-Trump activists free rein to target Stone.

And if Stone doesn’t get a second — and fair — trial?

He should be getting a presidential pardon instead.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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