Fred Weinberg: Judge in Roger Stone Case Is Perfect Example of Problems with Federal Court System
So federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Roger Stone to 40 months in federal prison.
Jackson — an Obama appointee — was oh-so-self-righteous in her commentary about Stone’s “crimes,” saying, “The problem is that nothing about this case was a joke; it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a prank. Stone’s conduct displayed flagrant disrespect for the institution of government established by the Constitution, including Congress and this court.”
Seriously?
The Obama appointee went over the line by saying, “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
Um, covering up what, your honor?
And you wonder exactly why the public is losing respect every day for federal law enforcement.
Keep in mind that Stone was actually convicted of lying to Congress. The same Congress that contains Adam Schiff, who has made a huge habit of lying to everybody, including the people who elected him.
And the actual conviction was made by a jury the foreman of which was a Democratic activist who had come out as anti-Trump. Somehow, the judge and the prosecution didn’t notice that the juror in question had once run for Congress as a Democrat.
And you wonder exactly why the public is losing respect every day for federal law enforcement.
Federal judges at the District level do their damndest to screw with President Trump’s agenda every day. They issue nationwide injunctions that tend to get overruled by higher courts but cost time and money.
Whatever happened to Chief Justice John Roberts’ definition of a judge? “Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.”
Apparently District Judge Jackson doesn’t understand her role that way. Yet ultimately, the way our system works, she reports to Chief Justice Roberts.
And you wonder exactly why the public is losing respect every day for federal law enforcement.
Roberts once said that we don’t have Obama judges and Trump judges. Sometimes, that’s true.
Take the example of Las Vegas-based Judge Gloria Navarro, who was appointed by Obama yet threw out the charges against Cliven Bundy in a politically charged trial when she caught the prosecutors playing fast and loose with the truth.
Judge Jackson? Not so much.
Then there are the 2000 former DOJ employees who wrote a letter demanding Attorney General William Barr resign because he has had the nerve to look into the origins of the Russian collusion investigations and the FISA warrants to spy on the president’s campaign.
Given that many of the people who signed that letter are exactly the people who got us to this point, your blood should run cold when you hear the words “career prosecutor.”
Maybe it’s time people like Judge Jackson should only hear cases involving violent crimes. Drug cartel busts, human trafficking, bank robbery — crimes involving bodies. They might find that crap like trying Roger Stone for process crimes that led to nothing is far less important than what she was appointed to do.
All she did in this trial was to make herself seem like Elizabeth Warren in a Democratic debate.
It wasn’t a good look.
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