A new report has revealed that the foreperson in the Roger Stone trial has a history of anti-Trump bias.
Fox News contributor, Judge Andrew Napolitano, said that this new information is enough to declare a mistrial.
According to Town Hall:
On Wednesday, the foreperson on the jury that convicted Roger Stone revealed who she was, and evidence surfaced that she is a political activist who has ripped President Trump on social media, participated in anti-Trump rallies, and run unsuccessfully as a Democrat for Congress in 2012.
According to The Daily Mail, Tomeka Hart, a board member of the Shelby County Schools in Tennessee who served as board president in 2008-2009, wrote on Facebook to defend the four prosecutors who withdrew after the DOJ recommended that the sentence for Stone, who was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, be lightened. She stated:
As foreperson, I made sure we went through every element, of every charge, matching the evidence presented in the case that led us to return a conviction of guilty on all 7 counts … I have kept my silence for months. Initially, it was for my safety. Then, I decided to remain silent out of fear of politicizing the matter … But I can’t keep quiet any longer. I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis – the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial … 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. For that, I wanted to speak up for them and ask you to join me in thanking them for their service.
Hart confirmed to The Daily Memphian that she wrote the Facebook post. Once her identity had been revealed, evidence of her political history was posted on social media.
Fox News published a report about Judge Napolitano’s comments:
Former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart revealed Wednesday that she was the foreperson of the jury that convicted 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.
“[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,” Napolitano told “Fox & Friends.”
Hart even posted specifically about the Stone case before she voted to convict, 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.
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.
This certainly looks like evidence that the jury foreman in Roger Stone’s case determined long before she was tapped as a juror that anyone indicted by Mueller must be guilty. https://t.co/YZr4ABx58G
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 13, 2020
Juror on Roger Stone case:
– Democrat candidate for Congress
– Despised Trump and his inner circle
– Far left wing activist pic.twitter.com/jEAqhg90hc
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 13, 2020
Judge Napolitano stated that the built-in bias of a juror should automatically trigger a judge to declare a mistrial in order to ensure a fair trial.
