This story, from Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller, suggests that whoever did the jury selection/voir dire on the Roger Stone case failed badly. Someone on Twitter said "This is what happens when the judge does the voir dire."
Lead Roger Stone Juror Ran For Congress As Democrat In 2012, Posted Negative Stories About Trump Throughout Russia Probe https://t.co/Fhpjdf6Pjo
Ross reports that Stone had wanted a change of venue:
Stone, who was indicted Jan. 24, 2019, argued in the lead up to his trial that he would be unable to receive a fair trial in Washington, D.C., due to its left-leaning populace. He was convicted Nov. 15, 2019, on five counts of making false statements to Congress, one obstruction charge, and a witness tampering charge.
Anyhow, the story is that this obviously bogus prosecution resulted in not only a conviction, but the threat of a sentence of seven to nine years. Neither Trump or Bill Barr would stand for that, and that’s led to yammering about the "rule of law", and anti-Trump prosecutors resigning.
A woman named Tomeka Hart was the foreman of the jury that convicted Stone, and came out with a Facebook post defending the prosecutors, leading to this reportage from Ross:
CNN first reported Hart’s post but did not note that she was a Democrat. Commercial Appeal, a news outlet affiliated with USA Today that spoke to Hart, reported details of her professional background. Those details match up with the same person who ran for Congress in 2012. A Politico reporter who covered Stone’s trial identified Hart as a former congressional candidate.
Hart, who did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment, lost to incumbent Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen in the 2012 primary.
Hart’s social media accounts show she kept a close eye on developments in the special counsel’s investigation.
Her Twitter feed shows dozens of references to Trump, many of them links to negative stories about the Republican. In a Twitter post on Aug. 19, 2017, Hart quoted a tweet referring to Trump as the “#KlanPresident,” in an apparent reference to the KKK.
She also retweeted a post from CNN analyst Bakari Sellers criticizing Stone defenders who were upset over the circumstances of his arrest on Jan. 25, 2019. More than a dozen FBI agents raided Stone’s home in South Florida.
Screen shot of Tomeka Hart’s Twitter feed
It was at this point that I said to myself "Wait, what color is this anti-Trump jury foreman?"
The Daily Caller didn’t provide any pictures, although they linked to her Twitter feed. However, the reliable Daily Mail did.
Hart is on the left, the woman with the grey hair is anti-white former DNC Chair Donna Brazile:
As I noted above, Stone didn’t think he'd get a fair trial from DC jury, but he mentioned politics as the reason. (DC votes Democratic in the high 90s.) I don’t know if he'd be allowed to object to a black jury as such. It’s possible that even if Hart had no connection to formal Democratic politics she'd have felt like this.
In 2007, I noted something Neal Freeman had written about the later-reversed conviction of Reagan advisor Lyn Nofziger in the pre-purge National Review:
When Nofziger finally went to trial in the winter of 1988 (that’s right, 1988) he was thrust before a jury of his peers — as it happened, 12 black peers from the District of Columbia, who if the law of averages means anything had voted against Ronald Reagan with aberrational intensity.
The prosecution lost no opportunity to make the point that Nofziger and Reagan were politically indistinguishable. Nofziger had, after all, been one of Reagan’s closest aides since the gubernatorial days in Sacramento. By the end of the five-week trial, jurors could have been forgiven for supposing that Nofziger had spent most of his year in the White House personally closing out welfare accounts. The jury voted solidly for Mondale and conviction. Even the working press, which does not shrink from the sight of a right-winger getting what’s coming to him, felt that something other than justice had been done. [Links and emphasis added]
Justice — Lyn Nofziger’s conviction, National Review, [Not online] August 5, 1988
At no time does the Daily Caller mention the words "black" or African-American.
