Will Roger Stone Get a New Trial?

to the jury. Judge Amy Berman Jackson made the comments during an unusual hearing on Stone's request for a new trial, during which three of the jurors, including the four person were questioned. Joining me is Brad Moss, a partner at Mark Za. Have you ever heard comments like this coming from a judge? So judges are known on occasion to make rather pointed remarks where necessary. What is someone unusual here?

Is why became required given the political circus and the circumstances of a US president, So repeatedly and brazenly, you know, chiming in on the case talking about a bias judge, talking about a biased jury for a person and arguably saying that the entire prosecution should not have happened in

the first place. So that was kind of somewhat unprecedented situation, I mean, and the judge made it clear and addressing the merits of Roger Stone's motion for her to recuse that it was arguably more designed just to you know, put the words judge and biased into a media chiron for Fox News, that it was based on any kind of actual legal merit. And so that's what makes this somewhat unusual. And it's what even you know, irritated the

Attorney General. Is it made clear about a week or two ago Stone is asking for a new trial, and his claim is that the jury was biased. Why does he think he deserves a new trial. So before you ever go to trial, you have to pick a jury, and both parties, you know, the government lawyers and the defense counsel's lawyers, gets you question or what's called guadire each of the individual perspective jurors. You get to ask

them a whole bunch of questions. They fill out a questionnaire addressing various issues, and you have the right to challenge them as a prospective juror with this particular individual, who we found out was later selected on unrelated reasons to be the fourth person by the jury. She has apparently had some public social media posts, and she was very clearly not a fan of the president, not a

fan of Roger Stone necessarily. But what we found out was she didn't evolve the entirety of that information in her questionnaire. She simply said, I don't remember the extent to which I may have, you know, read news on this issue, were commented on it publicly. Now, a competent defense team would have searched public records, would have searched public social media posts, and would have seen what she had their online, none of which was set the private,

and would have bounced her during guadir. They didn't do that. That was just a complete fellure of criminal defense one on one. So now they're trying to basically get a second bite at the app both saying well, we missed it up the first time, but her answer on the questionnaire was, you know, somewhat misleading, and so we didn't think to look. That is, to say the least, a rather thin legal argument. I don't anticipate it will ultimately succeed.

But again, this isn't about legal merits. This is about setting up a part in down the line. The defense actually had a jury consultant working with them. Yeah, you know, it's one of those things where this is Alex said this Literally all you had to do was google the person's name and pull up their social media posts. This is not exactly a glowing endorsement for that jury consultant and his or her work prowess and professionalism. What's the standard?

Because the jury four person, she might have omitted certain things. So basically what the judge has to assess it was a couple of different things. One if the person's uh statements on the questionnaire were deliberately or knowingly misleading or false. Given the way it was couched. And we heard some of the testimony from the fourth person herself during the hearing yesterday, it's thin it best the argument that she was deliberately misleading them. She didn't say I haven't read

anything on this. She says, I don't remember the full details of what I've seen, so you know, you can imagine. She also said, I post all other kinds of things on Twitter, but all kinds of other manners of topics, so it could be understandable and reasonable that she might not remember those specific posts, but everything else they probed into, you know, discussions with other jurors. Jurors all denied that this person had tried to push them a particular way.

They all denied that she had tried to, you know, impose her political views than any of them, and they actually said she was the one, the four person was the one who made clear that everybody need to be very careful and review everything very in depth when looking over some of these charges. It certainly didn't provide any real substantiating evidence of bias or impermissible behavior by the fourth person in terms of how this jury ultimately deliberated

and found Roger Stone guilty. And again, this is all just them setting up apart, and if this were any other case would be a hail mary that everybody would be rejecting. A matter of course, the only reason it has legs is because it's the president's old friend, Roger Stone,

and the president's media allies are hyping it. The judge said that the filing was somewhat hyperbolic, like the motion for recusal, It's marked by a tone that I haven't seen previously in pleadings in this case and was particularly reliant on adjectives. That's according to the judge. When the facts on his side, you argue law. When the law is not on your side, you pound on the desk and yell. And that's what Roger stones lawyers were doing here.

The government had him nailed to write. It was very clear that what he had done was had crossed the line into criminal liability and that's what happened at the trial. He was convicted properly and even the Attorney General agrees with it that it was a righteous prosecution. This was all meant for media consumption. Those motions were drafted to hype up media awareness and particularly the president's views that he and his friends have been unjustly persecuted. It was

not necessarily meant to win before the judge. I've been talking to Brad Moss of Mark Sade about Roger Stone's motion for a new trial. The judge denied a previous request for a new trial based on claims that a different juror was biased against Stone over the weekend. As you referred to, she rejected Stone's claim that she herself was biased. So does it seem like we can make an educated guess where this motion is going to end up.

I think it's highly unlikely, but I can obviously rule it out, but highly unlikely that the judge will be granting the motion for a new trial here. I'm sure roger Stone will appeal that will put any sentencing the forty months, that will put that on hold pending appellate review. Probably of that appeal of the motion for a new trial. I don't have any reason to believe that roger Stone

will actually spend a single day in jail. Even if the President is defeated in November for reelection, he will almost certainly issue a pardon then during the lane duck prior to departing office. Roger Stone is just stalling for time. Speaking of stalling for time, can he drag this out until after the election where he will not have to report to jail, because if Trump wants to give him a pardon, I assume he would want to wait till after the election so he can. But it's ultimately somewhat

subject to the whims and discretion of the judge. So assuming the judge the next week or two denies the motion for a new trial, she could if she wanted order Roger Stone to surrender within two weeks and start

his prison sentence while any appeals are ongoing. It is more than likely, though, given the notoriety of the case and given the non violent circumstances of the charges, that she will permit him to remain out on bond pending the appellate review of her rulings on a motion for a new trial is if only to avoid, you know, possibly getting smacked down by the d C Circuit later

on for having put him in jail. President Trump ramped up his unorthodox battle with the judiciary and continued his assault on judges by demanding that Supreme Court Justices Sonya Soto Mayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recused themselves from future cases involving him or his administration. Let's begin with the dissenting opinion by Soto Mayor that led to President Trump's comments.

So to Mayor, in a case in which, in a five to four vote, conservative justices are allowing the administration to start enforcing its new immigrant wealth test in Illinois before the case is heard in the lower courts, explain

her dissent. Basically, what justice so to Mayora's complaint was was that the courts were abdicating their responsibility and essentially giving the executive branch too much leeway here on something that could have a monumental impact going forward on how we handle immigration in this country and allowing it to occur while the litigation was still ongoing. But what was caught up in what Fox There's an all the conservative media was the very hyperbolic nature of some of her

language in the descent. It was a very fiery descent. And there's a long history of justices on the Supreme Court and lower courts, you know, issuing occasional fiery descents, and she was, as far as I can recall, she was largely on her own in this particular descent, And so it caught Win and some of the individual and conservative media had a whole bunch of issue with the nature of the verbiage and the language and saying it was suggesting it was reflecting of her particular ideological bias

against the president, and that of course, for Donald Trump, he thinks any judge who said something bad about him is inherently biased and has to accuse, which of course is not the standard. Well, the numbers are on Sodo mayors side. I've done many segments on the Trump administration taking this step of bypassing the appellate courts and running

to the Supreme Court claiming it's an emergency. Also, recently the Supreme Court allowed him to take money from the Defense and the Pentagon to start building his wall, when

that case isn't at the Supreme Court yet. Well, and so what she's speaking to, and it's partially arguably in the end really commenting on the breakdown and political order, is that the reason this has become so necessary for the Trump administration is because the nature of these controversial policies, much of which are being done strictly out of the executive branch, such as redirecting a funds appropriated by Congress to build the walls, such as stuff like the travel bands,

such as stuff like this immigration welfare review. It's being done without proper oversight by Congress and arguably without any scrutiny by Congress. And so her complaint is ultimately that the courts are not supposed to be used as a

way to circumvent the other political branch and the Trump administration. Nonetheless, it's making rather you know, novel and effective use of this emergency stay ordered from the from the Supreme Court like they did in the other case that you mentioned, to basically allow them to start implementing the procedures, start implementing the policy while the legal fight within the branches and amongst the Executive Branch and relevant third parties remains ongoing.

And it's it's a dissent and her view of how this is an abuse of the process, although not necessarily one that the Supreme Court obviously at the moment, is willing to address. There are no rules for when the jocision should recuse themselves. They're sort of on their own, and there has been some critique that there should be

some rules. Yeah, and so the problem with imposing rules there is because the Supreme Court is basically the only piece created by the Constitution, and the qualifications are established by the Constitution. It's the one situation where Congress doesn't necessarily have the ability to impose requirements or change any of those qualifications, or impose recusal requirements absent a constitutional amendment.

Unlike you know, lower court judges and unlike you know a pelic court judges, a lot of which is derived from Congressional creation Supreme courts somewhat different there, So these in court justices take it upon themselves to decide if

they have to recoose him. You think of Justice Thomas, His wife is a very prominent political operative, has been extensively involved in any number of campaign of political operations over the years, including during the Obama administration, was very you know, active and very involved in expressing her views.

And Justice Thomason was never required or you know, forced to recuse himself from any number of issues legal issues that came before the court that obviously implicated his wife's interests. And that was just the reality the situation. There's nothing in Justice Ginsburg's comments or in Justice so of Myers comments that require them to accuse from Trump related matters. This is the President hyping a political argument that has no base in reality. Does this complicate in any way

the administration's legal fights on his behalf? You know, it'll certainly annoy someone like Justice Roberts, but I don't anticipate that in the end the legal merits will be impacted by this plitical circus. By enlarge, these justices are well situa wells situated enough in their their confidence their self esteem and their egos to not be swayed by whatever Donald J. Trump says about them. They've been and gone

through worse. Uh, this is not the first one of the last time they're gonna have to deal with, you know, an executive branch they dislike. There are a lot of conservative justices who disliked them of what the Obama administration to President Obama in particular said about them. You know this, This isn't going to sway the legal merits. Ultimately, those cases will be dependent of some rather narrow issues, especially on stuff like the president's tax returns and its financial records.

Thanks for being on Bloomberg Law, Brad. That's Brad Moss apartment in Mark. Say. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg. Ye