DENIED

Judge Denies Roger Stone’s Bid for a New Trial

In an 81-page opinion rejecting Stone’s argument of juror bias in his 2019 case, Judge Jackson also lifted the Trump ally’s gag order that prevented him from talking to the press.

Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidant convicted of lying to Congress in 2017 about his interactions with WikiLeaks and pressuring another witness to do the same, will not get a retrial over alleged juror misconduct, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in an 81-page opinion that the forewoman in Stone’s case had not lied to the court about her opinions before the November trial. Stone, 67, has since been sentenced to 40 months in prison for seven charges, including lying to congressional investigators, witness tampering, and obstructing justice. Jackson also lifted the Trump ally’s gag order that prevented him from talking to the press.

“In the absence of any explicit statements of opinion about Stone, the defense casts its arguments about bias in terms of some sort of blend of ‘anti-Stone and anti-Trump sentiment,’” Jackson wrote. “But linking them together in a sentence does not make them one and the same; there is zero evidence of ‘explicit bias’ against Stone, and the defendant’s attempts to gain a new trial based on implied or inferred bias fail.”