On Monday, President Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser Roger Stone drew attention for an Instagram post attacking federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over his trial — and seemingly threatening her with an image of crosshairs.
After furious social media condemnation for his behavior, Stone deleted the post, denying it was intended as a threat, and his lawyers issued an apology to the court.
But it seems as though this was not sufficient to get him out of trouble.
On Tuesday, Jackson called for a hearing to revisit Stone’s release on bail pending trial, which could potentially result in him being thrown in jail until his court date — and specifically cited his Instagram post attacking her:
Stone, who was arrested last month after special counsel Robert Mueller charged him with lying, obstruction, and witness tampering related to his alleged facilitation of the Trump campaign’s use of stolen Democratic emails that were posted to WikiLeaks in 2016, would not be the first member of Trump’s inner circle who faced revocation of bail for pretrial misbehavior behavior. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort lost his bail privileges after he was accused of witness tampering in the run-up to his trial.
The fact that Stone could now face the same fate comes as no surprise to some legal experts. “Violent gang members, leaders of drug cartels & mob guys have more respect for judges & very rarely do something like this,” tweeted Mimi Rocah, a law professor and former federal prosecutor.
It is possible that Stone, who unsuccessfully petitioned the court to reassign the case to another judge, intended all of this as a ploy to make Jackson so personally angry at him that she would have to recuse herself from his trial. If so, this ploy was doomed from the start, because recusal does not work that way.
Whatever his intent, all of these antics have clearly made Stone’s legal position worse — and he has no one to blame but himself.
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