Tucker Carlson smeared the jury forewoman in the Roger Stone trial, thus setting her up for harassment or worse. Fox News editor Gregg Re dragged her even further through the mud, along with two other jurors for good measure.
While outrage mounts over Attorney General William Barr’s interference in Stone’s sentencing, Tucker Carlson has openly demanded that Fan-in-Chief Trump pardon Stone or commute his sentence. The Daily Beast reports that Carlson has proved such a reliable on-air advocate that “Trump allies who seek leniency for Stone have specifically sought to appear on the Fox News show in order to get the message to the president.” Much less apparent, as Erik Wemple nicely points out, is Carlson’s personal friendship with Stone and how that puts the lie to Carlson’s populist cloak.
Now Carlson has gone the extra mile in a stunt that dirty-trickster Stone would surely appreciate: gratuitously smearing the trial forewoman and hinting at similar attacks on the judge to follow.
From Carlson’s pre-scripted, i.e. pre-approved commentary that falsely claims Stone was only prosecuted because of his politics:
During the jury selection process at Roger Stone's trial, lawyers asked the eventual foreman of the jury, if there was anything that would affect her ability to judge Stone fairly. No, she claimed. She hadn't paid much attention to the Russia probe.
That turned out to be a lie and a stupid one at that. That juror's Twitter account is public, and it turns out that she's an anti-Trump zealot who closely followed the Mueller investigation.
In one tweet, for example, she called Donald Trump "The Klan President." When Stone was taken into custody in a dawn raid by dozens of federal agents armed with automatic weapons and an airboat, she mocked the idea that the arrest was excessive. "Oh, it seems fine to me."
This is not a neutral person. This is not someone capable of judging this trial fairly. This is a partisan who lied about who she was. Roger Stone is facing life in prison because an Obama-appointed judge, Amy Berman Jackson, allowed this woman to run the jury.
In the video, Carlson shows a large photo of the juror and her Twitter account. FoxNews.com editor Gregg Re went into greater detail online yesterday, enumerating her anti-Trump sentiments along with those of two other named jurors, even though it was Stone, not Trump, on trial. Neither Re nor Carlson seems to have bothered trying to find out why the jurors were ruled sufficiently unbiased to serve on the jury. Who needs the rest of the story when suspicion is enough? Or when you have a chance to make the lives of your political foes a living hell?
You can watch the gratuitous vengefulness below, from the February 13, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Is Mr. Fairness concerned of his mango cult leader persecuting his enemies? Where’ the segment on DoJ laying off McCabe? Comey? Stop chanting “Lock her up”? Is he concerned Trump whines for retaliation against Democrats like Pelosi and Shiff? What about firing Vindman, his brother, Sondiland, and Yovanovitch?
Fairness isn’t important to cults. Keeping people all thinking and behaving exactly the same is.
Everything from espionage, colluding with foreign interests, blackmail, perjury and obstruction of justice/congressional oversight to partisan gerrymandering, unjustified roll purging and providing inadequate voting facilities should be doubly punishable if it is for the purpose of subverting democratic elections.
First the sentence for Stone is too long! Then. The jury was crooked (and he shouldn’t have been found guilty, I guess).
Interesting that no one on Fox seems to feel that if the sentencing guidelines are way too strict for Stone’s crimes, then they are probably too strict for the next schmuck who engages in: obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering. You know, the next schmuck who isn’t great pals with the president and his friends in the media. They’d rather smear jurors, judges and prosecutors and putting innocent lives in danger, than even admit that Stone is actually guilty, that his friendship with Trump was not a factor in his guilt, and the jury just did its job, like any other jury.