The jury foreman on the Roger Stone trial came forward on social media Wednesday to defend the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case after the Department of Justice overruled their excessive sentencing recommendation.
A Facebook post written by Tomeka Hart, the senior program officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was picked up by multiple news outlets. But the reports left out some highly pertinent details about her background—namely that Hart is a hyperpartisan Democratic Party activist who is rabidly anti-Trump and a Russia-collusion truther.
https://twitter.com/Shem_Infinite/status/1227794644618092546?s=20
Hart has a law degree from the University of Memphis and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012.
https://youtu.be/jhlAJ7fBR7E
The head juror in Roger Stone’s trial is very active on Twitter, and surprisingly enough, didn’t think to scrub all of her eyebrow-raising tweets after she went public.
In January 2019, she retweeted a post about Stone’s arrest:
And she commented last year on the “indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions” of people in President Trump’s “inner circle” after Stone had been indicted.
https://twitter.com/Shem_Infinite/status/1227823942217367552?s=20
Right-wing journalist Mike Cernovich first went digging into Hart’s highly partisan background after she came forward with her “concerns.”
The author of this article was a juror on the Roger Stone case.
She has an active social media profile.
How in the F-CK did a judge approve this far left wing activist as a fair and impartial juror? https://t.co/4JCbz7hmxb pic.twitter.com/AYWZ5AEmVS
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 13, 2020
A lot of conservatives were wondering Tuesday night how such an incredibly biased, anti-Trump individual got on the jury of this politically charged chase. If she had answered her juror questionnaire honestly, she likely would have been dismissed from jury duty.
On that Roger Stone juror –
Of the utmost importance will be her responses to these juror questions on:
(1) Social media and the Mueller investigation
(2) Running for office
If she answered in the negative… things will get interesting.
kudos @Cernovich pic.twitter.com/xoHBwkTmaZ
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) February 13, 2020
CNN was first to report that Hart had come forward to defend the four Justice Department prosecutors who withdrew from the case and resigned on Tuesday. Without mentioning anything about her political past history, CNN helped Hart push her anti-Trump narrative:
Tomeka Hart said she had remained silent about the case for months out of concern for her safety and “politicizing the matter.”But the events this week led to her to post on her Facebook account that she “can’t keep quiet any longer.” A copy of the posting was shared with CNN. Hart confirmed to CNN that she wrote the post but did not want to discuss it further.
“I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis—the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial,” she wrote in the Facebook post. “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.”
The rest of her post is below:
I’m standing up for them now because I was a juror on the case. In fact, I was the foreperson.
I am sharing the November 22, 2019 op-ed of Seth Cousins, another juror–and not just because he said this: “My favorite person on the jury was an African American woman from Tennessee.”
Seth perfectly articulated my sentiments. I couldn’t have written a better piece–so I share his. I admired his bravery in speaking out so soon after the trial. Read Seth’s piece please.
I wasn’t ready. There had already been attempts at finding out who I was. Threats to expose my identity. For a moment I was afraid.
But I don’t live in fear. It is not my nature to be silent.
As Seth asserts, “We did not convict Stone based on his political beliefs or his expression of those beliefs. We did not convict him of being intemperate or acting boorishly. We convicted him of obstructing a congressional investigation, of lying in five specific ways during his sworn congressional testimony and of tampering with a witness in that investigation.”
The prosecutors who have now resigned did a masterful job of laying out every element of every charge, backed with ample evidence. 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.
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.
“The prosecutors who have now resigned did a masterful job of laying out every element of every charge, backed with ample evidence,” Hart said. “As foreperson, I made sure we went through every element, or every charge, matching the evidence presented in the case that led us to return a conviction of guilty on all 7 counts.
“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.”