Tag: amy berman jackson
Stone Posts Meme That Depicts Him Wielding Sword Against Judge

Stone Posts Meme That Depicts Him Wielding Sword Against Judge

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

As Trump confidant Roger Stone serves home confinement while waiting to report to prison on July 14, he is using Instagram to attack Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the federal judge who oversees his case. Stone previously ran afoul of Jackson after he used his Instagram account to post a picture that showed Jackson next to apparent gun crosshairs.

The image Stone posted on Instagram on July 4 references the film 300, a fictionalized account of the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, which pitted a small number of Spartan warriors against Persian King Xerxes I.

Read NowShow less
Judge Slams Trump, Stone Allies For Targeting Juror

Judge Slams Trump, Stone Allies For Targeting Juror

The judge overseeing Roger Stone’s criminal case gave a verbal lashing to Donald Trump and other Republicans who have questioned the intentions of the jury foreperson in Stone’s trial, saying their attacks could have a “chilling effect” on jurors in the future.

“Any attempt to harass or intimidate jurors is completely antithetical to our system of justice,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Tuesday at a hearing to determine whether Stone will get a new trial, according to the Washington Post.

Trump has helped prop up Stone’s argument that the jury that convicted him in 2019 of seven counts of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and lying to Congress was tainted by anti-Trump jurors.

Jackson specifically called out Trump for this practice, saying he “used his Twitter platform to present his opinion about the foreperson.” She also chastised pro-Trump Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who called the jury foreperson an “anti-Trump zealot.

“This is indisputably a highly publicized case in which the president himself shone a spotlight on the jury,” Jackson said, according to the Washington Post. “The risk of harassment and intimidation of any jurors who may testify in the hearing later today is is extremely high, and individually who may be angry about Mr. Stone’s conviction may chose to take it out on them personally.”

Minutes after Jackson made her comment, Trump once again attacked the jury foreperson in Stone’s case — ignoring Jackson’s plea to stop the behavior.

“There has rarely been a juror so tainted as the forewoman in the Roger Stone case,” Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “Look at her background. She never revealed her hatred of ‘Trump’ and Stone. She was totally biased, as is the judge. Roger wasn’t even working on my campaign. Miscarriage of justice. Sad to watch!”

Stone is hoping that his efforts to paint a juror as biased toward Trump may earn him a new trial.

He already tried to get Jackson removed from the case by saying she was biased against him, a request Jackson denied in a fiery opinion she released on Sunday.

“Given the absence of any factual or legal support for the motion for disqualification, the pleading appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the Court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words ‘judge’ and ‘biased’ in it,” Jackson wrote, according to the Post.

Just last week, Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison, followed by 24 months supervised release, and a $20,000 fine for his crimes.

During the sentencing, Jackson slammed Stone for having “injected himself, characteristically, in one of the most significant issues of the day” when he tried to impede former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, adding that Stone was “prosecuted for covering up for the president.”

Later that day, Trump delivered an extended tirade during a ceremony for Hope for Prisoners, a program for former inmates. He attacked the jury forewoman as “an anti-Trump person totally” and alleged she had engaged in a “defrauding of the court” that might necessitate a pardon for Stone.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Judge Slaps Roger Stone With Social Media Restriction For Violating Order

Judge Slaps Roger Stone With Social Media Restriction For Violating Order

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Roger Stone has repeatedly risked his pre-trial freedom as he awaits the court battle over the charges brought against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And once again on Tuesday, he skirted free of ending up in jail even as Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that he had violated her court order limiting his public comments about the case against him.

Instead of revoking his bail, Judge Jackson banned him from posting on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook while his trial is pending.

“The clarity of my order is undisputed,” said Jackson. “It didn’t take a week before the defendant was emailing BuzzFeed, calling a witness in this investigation a liar.”

She said Stone’s lawyer had to “twist himself into a pretzel” to argue that his client’s posts didn’t cross the line.

Stone has been charged with lying to Congress, obstructing justice, and intimidating a witness. He has denied the charges.

She had previously placed him under a gag order to prevent him from discussing the case publicly after he posted an image of her on Instagram next to crosshairs. However, he is still allowed to raise funds for his defense.

That gag order remains in place. But Jackson said she has to “help” Stone out because he’s shown he’s unable to follow “simple orders.”

Prosecutors have said that Stone has violated the gag order multiple times since it has been issued, leading to the judge’s new social media ban.

 

Manafort Sentenced To Additional 43 Months In Federal Prison

Manafort Sentenced To Additional 43 Months In Federal Prison

Paul Manafort, the convicted felon who led Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign during a crucial period, was sentenced to an additional 43 months in federal prison on Wednesday — ensuring the disgraced Republican political operative will spend seven-and-a-half years behind bars for his crimes.

Manafort’s new prison time — which he received for committing conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice after Manafort attempted to tamper with witnesses in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — will be tacked on to the 47 months in prison Manafort was sentenced to last week by a federal judge in Virginia.

That 47-month sentence Manafort received was incredibly light compared to the 19- to 24-year sentence recommended for the host of crimes Manafort was both convicted of and pleaded guilty to committing. And the judge in the case — T.S. Ellis —has been widely panned for being sympathetic to Manafort, somehow saying Manafort had lived a “blameless life” despite Manafort’smany crimes and work for brutal and violent dictators.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson was much harsher in her sentencing than a federal judge in Virginia was last week.

Jackson chided Manafort during the sentencing, saying it was “hard to overstate” the numbers of lies he told and the fraud he committed. And she said he made these choices in order to “sustain a lifestyle at the most opulent and extravagant level” and to buy “more houses than one man can enjoy, more suits than one man can wear.”

Her tough words were widely expected, as Jackson had been much harsher on Manafort during the tiral process. She was the judge who decided to revoke Manafort’s bail last June and have him locked up while he awaited trial and sentencing, after it was determined that he committed more crimes after his initial indictment.

Still, Jackson said during the hearing that she did not take into account the Virginia sentence when determining how to proceed.

“What is happening today is not or can not be a revision of a sentence that is imposed by another court,” Jackson said, according to NBC News.

Trump, for his part, has not ruled out pardoning Manafort. However if Trump does pardon him, New York state prosecutors are weighing charging Manafort with state crimes that do not fall under Trump’s pardon power.

In total, at least six members of Trump’s campaign or inner circle have been indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty in Mueller’s probe — which is still ongoing. And dozens of other Russians and companies have also been hit with indictments for their hacking and meddling during the 2016 campaign.

The so-called “witch hunt” Trump has accused Mueller of conducting sure has found a lot of witches…

Published with permission of The American Independent.