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1. Many of you have expressed outrage that Roger Stone was not jailed yesterday after Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that he intentionally, repeatedly & flagrantly violated her media contact (gag) order. Here’s my take based on attending yesterday’s court hearing...
2. Judge Berman spent the better part of an hour detailing Stone’s 7 or 8 social media posts that plainly violated her order. She quizzed Stone’s attorneys on whether they agreed that he violated her order. They offered arguments that were, to put it kindly, not persuasive ...
3. In rejecting Stone’s attorney’s arguments, Judge Jackson said, ‘you are twisting the facts, twisting the plain language of my order, and twisting yourself into a pretzel’ trying to justify Stone’s behavior. She then made a finding that Stone repeatedly violated her order...
4. She then turned to the government for its position. Judge Jackson commented, with obvious skepticism, that the government’s earlier written submission detailing Stone’s many violations did NOT include a request that Stone’s pretrial release should be revoked ...
5. or that he should be detained pending trial. The prosecutor said, ‘we are not looking to punish the defendant for his past violations, we just want him to comply with the court’s order moving forward.’ The judge did not seem pleased with that position, IMO. Here’s my take...
6. Allowing Stone (or anyone) to disobey court orders with impunity damages the criminal justice system in three way: first, it emboldens others to violate court orders; second, it breeds disrespect for the system; and third it sends a message that the criminal justice system...
7. deals w/defendants who are wealthy, connected, influential & white differently than defendants who are not wealthy, not connected, not influential & are people of color. This is destructive, corrosive and flat-out un-American. So why did the prosecutors go so easy on Stone?
8. One possibility is they are trying to work out cooperation with Stone. But, in my experience, weakness isn’t the best way to inspire a defendant to cooperate w/the prosecution. Another possibility, AG Barr weighed in & directed the prosecutors not to seek pretrial detention...
9. The possibility that Barr did a favor for a defendant who likely could implicate Trump in wrongdoing is, unfortunately, what we have come to expect. Regardless of the reason for the prosecution’s decision to give Stone a pass, it’s hard to see how any good can come of it...
10. But it’s easy to see how much bad has come of it - a sense that our criminal justice system, in this instance, did not work as it should. For this former career prosecutor, yesterday’s hearing was disheartening...
11. Adding insult to injury, at the moment Judge Jackson announced she would not jail Stone pending trial but would merely ban him from posting anything on social media (little more than an angry parent taking away a teenager’s phone) ...
12. Stone broke out in a huge smile bordering on laughter. Stone was laughing at the judge, the prosecutors and the criminal justice system. It remains to be seen who will have the last laugh . . .
