Trump publicly targets and trashes the Black jury forewoman from Roger Stone trial
On Thursday afternoon, President Trump continued his attacks on our judicial process in retaliation for the sentencing of his crony Roger Stone to 40 months in prison.
Ironically speaking at a criminal justice event, the President of the United States publicly targeted the jury forewoman, an African-American woman named Tomeka Hart.
Trump trashed her for being an “anti-Trump activist” who had an “awful social media,” channeling the conspiracy theories about anti-Trump bias that right-wing media has been relentlessly promoting for the past few days.
Trump targets the forewoman of the Roger Stone trial, calls her an "anti-Trump activist" while speaking to the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony. She "had an awful social media" and is a "dominant" person. People have been targeted for harm based on Trump's attacks before. pic.twitter.com/fsujbCEfrS
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 20, 2020
Hart’s social media posts indicated that she was not a huge fan of Donald Trump or the crimes committed by his cronies, which of course sent right-wing social media into a paroxysm of fury as they cry bias.
Tomeka Hart, Roger Stone jury foreperson, revealed as anti-Trump activist, also…
“…U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had denied a defense request to strike a potential juror on the case, who was an Obama-era press official…”
The deck was fixed https://t.co/z4otTN1kPW
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) February 13, 2020
It is almost impossible to find one person capable of being neutral about a person as polarizing and inherently vile as Donald Trump, let alone ten — and if a federal district court judge feels that Hart conducted herself fairly and with integrity, then the issue should be put to rest.
.@KenDilanianNBC: "The judge said Roger Stone was not prosecuted in any political sense. He was prosecuted fairly & she also credited jurors for serving admirably. That's important b/c Stone has filed a motion for a new trial that she hasn't ruled on & he's alleging juror bias."
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 20, 2020
The president didn’t stop there, however, immediately delving into an unrelated and obviously false tangent about how Hillary Clinton was “leaking classified documents.”
At what is supposedly a criminal justice event, Trump keeps ranting about Roger Stone and says (falsely) that Hillary Clinton “leaked more classified documents … than any human being in the history of the United States of America.” Just made up. pic.twitter.com/kw6PUUyLIB
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 20, 2020
There is no occasion that President Trump won’t turn into an opportunity to hurl partisan smears at those who have offended him; it is just a sign of how absurd and how extreme everything has become that a summit on criminal justice was used to paint a target on the back of a juror and to accuse his political rivals of committing imaginary crimes.