UPDATED: About The Stone Jury
I've been looking around for a good summary of what's been coming out about several members of the Stone jury empaneled by Judge Amy Berman Jackson. A good, brief, but informative post can be found at Zerohedge: Lead Juror In Roger Stone Trial Was Left-Wing Former Political Candidate Who Despises Trump .
Here are a few important points--which you can read more about at the link. Techno-Fog notes that much will center around how the jurors answered the court questionnaire, which asks questions about things like ... political activity (running for office), social media activity, interest in the Russia Hoax (Mueller), etc. At this point we don't know how the jurors--and especially the foreman, Tomeka Hart, a leftwing activist who participated in anti-Trump protests--answered those questions.
However, Mike Cernovich offers what should be highly relevant information:
Meanwhile, Hart - who was a Democratic congressional candidate in Tennessee in 2012 [photo with Donna Brazile at the time], has a Twitter history littered with anti-Trump propaganda and was actively posting on social media during the trial. This, as attorney and journalist @Techno_Fog points out, raises questions over how she responded to the juror questionnaire which asked specific questions regarding social media, the Mueller investigation, and running for public office.
Her Twitter feed shows dozens of references to Trump , many of them links to negative stories about the Republican. In a Twitter post on Aug. 19, 2017, Hart quoted a tweet referring to Trump as the “#KlanPresident,” in an apparent reference to the KKK. -Daily Caller
In a trial that was strongly focused on Trump, this is important, because Hart's during-the-trial tweets were strongly anti-Trump. A Hart tweet on the day of Stone's guilty verdict also suggests that her political biases played an important role--the tweet is nothing but four emoticons: two red hearts (denoting joy?) and two clenched fists appearing to belong to "people of color." So, political bias and racial bias, all in one tweet. For Hart the verdict seems to have been viewed as a blow against the white GOP Klan presidency klique, as it were.
Am I reading too much into that? Almost certainly not. Three months before the start of the trial Hart tweeted a picture of an African-American woman holding up a T-Shirt with the caption: "Trump And Republicans Are Not Racist". Hart's tweet reads:
Then stop being racists. Co-signing and defending a racist [Trump] and his racist rhetoric makes you racist. Point blank.
Stone is a noted defender of Trump. By Hart's SJW logic Stone is a racist--thus the two person-of-color clenched fist emoticons suggest the verdict being, in her eyes, a victory over racism.
This regarding another juror seems rather remarkable:
Yossi Gestetner
@YossiGestetner
HELLO?
HELLO??
H-E-L-L-O???
One of the jurors on the Roger Stone show trial is the wife of an official who still works at the DOJ division that took down Stone!
The Oabama-appointed judge Amy Jackson says this is ok!
That juror admitted to negative views of Trump and to "following" the Mueller Witchhunt. Here's what Fox News tells us about that juror and another juror:
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.
Here's what we all know, but concerning which there was a Deep State/MSM conspiracy of silence:
thebradfordfile™
@thebradfordfile
It’s worth noting Robert Mueller knew Russian collusion was a farce when he went after Roger Stone. His goal was to catch Stone in a process crime to feed the media hysteria of a hoax Mueller knew to be untrue. Roger Stone was PERSECUTED.
It’s Mueller who belongs in prison.
Keep that in mind when you read that Durham, following Horowitz, is focusing on the fact that the FBI--and therefore Mueller--knew NO LATER THAN JANUARY, 2017, that Russian collusion was a HOAX. This dynamic has Team Mueller and the Deep State quaking in their jack boots.
As for what could happen in the Stone case going forward, the same Fox story notes:
But, Jackson shot down the motion for a new trial, saying the juror's potential bias was not demonstrated -- and even if it were, it wasn't significant enough to warrant the drastic step of calling for a new trial.
Courts allow for a new trial, Jackson noted, when "a serious miscarriage of justice may have occured." Bias is a permissible reason to remove a juror or call for a new trial only in "extreme situations where the relationship between a prospective juror and some aspect of the litigation is such that it is highly unlikely that the average person could remain impartial in his deliberations under the circumstances."
Jackson , who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, also took a shot at Stone's team for failing to uncover the information sooner.
"The defense could have easily conducted the same Internet search included in the instant motion and could have raised concerns at that time," Jackson wrote.
Two possible problems that I see with Jackson's reasoning:
It isn't Stone's fault that his lawyers should have caught something that they missed;
At least some of the evidence of bias became clear during the trial itself , via Hart's obsessive tweeting. The Stone lawyers would presumably have been occupied with the trial to be monitoring juror social media accounts.
A motion for a new trial is a steep hill to climb, steeper even than Flynn's motion to withdraw his plea. This could get interesting, especially in light of Barr's forthcoming declassification of Team Mueller FD-302s.
UPDATE 1: This looks very bad to me. Chuck Ross has the scoop at the Daily Caller--Here’s What The Lead Roger Stone Juror Said During Jury Selection :
* A former Democratic congressional candidate revealed Wednesday that she was the foreperson on the jury that convicted Roger Stone.
* Tomeka Hart said during the jury selection process that she did not “pay that close attention” to developments in the Russia investigation. She also said that Stone’s links to President Donald Trump would “absolutely not” affect her views at trial.
* But Hart’s social media posts show that she was closely tuned in to the Russia probe and that she considered Trump and his supporters to be racist.
* She retweeted a post that downplayed conservative concerns about the heavy handed arrest of Stone --a clear indication that she had developed views on the case before she was called to the jury.
Follow the link for lots more details that show she was closely following everything to do with Mueller and was obsessively tweeting about all things anti-Trump and anti-Trump supporters.
UPDATE 2: Undercover Huber has some good additional material on Tomeka Hart's lies :
ROGER STONE JUROR: I don’t watch C-Span.
ALSO ROGER STONE JUROR: I watch C-Span and then tweet politicians about it.
ROGER STONE JUROR: “I don’t pay that close attention” to political developments in the news.
ALSO ROGER STONE JUROR: I watch Meet the Press *re*-runs and CNN in the airport.*
*(Not even Chuck Todd and Brian Stelter do that)
Undercover Huber also has a long "inside baseball" type thread re Roger Stone :
Some thoughts on Roger Stone
Warning: this won’t be popular with many of my followers, but I’m gonna call balls and strikes anyway