President Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning, just a couple hours before a telephone conference call between lawyers for the president’s former adviser, Roger Stone, and prosecutors – threatening to file retaliatory lawsuits “all over the place” over former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, reports Reuters.
The Mueller probe resulted in several former Trump associates being charged, and Stone was one of only two to go to trial instead of pleading guilty. So it is easy to see why Trump has intertwined the Stone case into his Twitter tantrum over the Mueller probe.
As part of his ongoing “retribution tour,” Trump posted a series of tweets denouncing the Mueller probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as usual, calling it a “witch hunt” and adding, “If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place…BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!”
Prosecutors had called for Roger Stone to be given a prison sentence of from 7 to 9 years – however, Trump blatantly and publicly interfered in the case saying it “was a “miscarriage of justice,” Attorney General, Bill Barr then stepped in and submitted a revised filing, saying the prosecutors’ proposal “could be considered excessive and unwarranted.”
Trump continued his tirade on Twitter, writing: “Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous & self outed bias of the foreperson of the jury, whose also a lawyer, by the way. ‘Madam foreperson, your a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation, to reveal to us when we selected you the…..”
“…existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative about the President & the people who support him. Don’t you think we wanted to know that before we put you on this jury.’ Pretty obvious he should (get a new trial). I think almost any judge in the Country would order a new trial, I’m not so sure about Judge Jackson, I don’t know.”
It is difficult to accept Trump’s blatant disregard for the rule of law in this country. In a letter on Monday, over 2,000 former Justice Department officials criticized Barr and Trump’s behavior over the Roger Stone case, calling on Barr to resign. And today the Federal Judge’s Association is holding an emergency meeting over Trump and Bill Barr’s interference.