The jurors who handled the case of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone all say that they fear for their safety in the wake of public attacks from President Donald Trump himself and other personalities in the right wing media world. They’ve made the revelations in anonymous statements provided in a case where one such right-wing media personality and conspiracy theorist has requested that the court release documents that the jurors filled out that outline their personal histories including topics like employment. The idea from those on the president’s side is that the jury was biased against Stone. They’ve frequently simply refused to accept that Stone is guilty, instead baselessly making the jurors out to be conspirators.
In a court filing that emerged just this Wednesday night, one juror wrote:
‘I try to stay away from danger, but now it seems like the danger is coming to me. This whole situation blows me away, because all that I expected before the trial was simply appearing for jury duty. I feel that I should be protected for performing my civic duty.’
CNN reports that Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has handled Stone’s case, has “condemned the harassment and intimidation of jurors in the case, pledging to keep their identities private,” but she has not yet formally ruled on the request for the release of the demographic and background information about the jurors that a right-wing conspiracy theorist is after.
She herself has already attracted the ire of those on Stone’s side — Roger Stone himself once posted an image with her face near a target, which Jackson followed with a gag order demanding that Stone stop publicly commenting about the case. More recently, she denied Stone’s second request for a new trial, which cited supposed juror bias.
Jury forewoman Tomeka Hart, who has already been identified by name publicly, has already been singled out by the president himself for criticism over her supposedly bias-inducing past social media posts expressing opposition to the president’s agenda.
Hart “wrote that she still feels unsafe after the President tweeted about her around Stone’s sentencing date,” CNN summarizes. She and fellow juror Seth Cousins — who identified himself to the media — said they they have received “threatening” letters from total strangers, and two other jurors shared that they’ve received alarming phone calls that they suspect came from people aiming to harass them over the Stone trial. The jury unanimously ruled that Stone was guilty of all the charges against him.
Now, as one juror put it:
‘I am frightened that someone could harm my family simply because I was summoned and then chosen to serve on the jury.’
Another added:
‘No one should be allowed to use us — publicizing our lives and maybe ruining our careers — so that they can tweet or post bogus innuendo about this case.’
These threats are the real-life consequences of the cult of personality around Trump. Stone is just one of a slew of the president’s current and former associates who faced criminal charges over behavior that came to light amidst the Russia investigation. One of those allies — former Trump fixer Michael Cohen — was recently released from prison to serve the rest of his sentence under home confinement because of Coronavirus outbreak concerns.
