Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The judge apparently spoke for about an hour about what Stone did, and I would wager that Sebby spent no more than twenty seconds reading a third-account before he decided that he use of the phrase "cover up" is a scandal. Contrarian!
Also, what she said last night: "judges cannot be ‘biased’ and need not be disqualified if the views they express are based on what they learned while doing the job they were appointed to do."
Bonus conclusion: "At bottom, given the absence of any factual or legal support for the motion for disqualification, the pleading appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the Court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words 'judge' and 'biased' in it." |
It's flatly absurd for anyone to suggest judges cannot be biased. They can be and often are.
I do not think Berman did anything disqualifying. But I think there's enough to argue she is biased. I don't see how you get around that. She didn't need to get into Trump or a cover-up, but she did. I think it was a mistake and she opened the door for Trump to commute the guy's sentence which could otherwise have been kept shut.
And of course if I were Stone, I'd use her poor judgment in saying "cover up" against her. I also suggested she might've been using it intentionally to send a message to Trump, who she knows is going to commute Stone's sentence, and Barr, who gave her a headache by interfering in the sentencing phase.
But one needn't attack Berman to credibly argue for a new trial. That moron juror who posted support for the prosecutors despite having a closet full of anti-Trump social media posts is the best angle for that:
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciar...es-a-new-trial
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal...justice-undone
(Call Turley a hack all you like... But when you're done shooting the messenger, consider the facts he's citing. Anyone could make the argument that juror never belonged on the panel. And the only real counter I see to it is, "Well, Stone's lawyers should have done a better job of keeping her off... If he has a gripe here, it's with them. Let him raise it in an ineffectiveness of counsel petition.")
ETA: That "bonus conclusion" you cite is Berman admitting what's coming. She could have done this more cleanly. If you were the judge, you'd know how to do this. You'd say nothing about politics, nothing about the President, nothing about a cover-up. You'd coolly walk through the elements of each misrepresentation, note that each is a crime, and sentence him based on lying, which is all one needs to do. She took the bait. The feds took the bait. The minute they got into why Stone was lying, they were playing his and Trump's game. Dumb.
