Oh this is sketchy as hell.  The notorious activist DC Judge Amy Berman Jackson announced today she will deliver the sentence for Roger Stone on Thursday; however, she will immediately postpone execution of that sentence until the issues around the request for a new trial are resolved.   Here’s what appears to be happening….

Judge Amy Berman-Jackson doesn’t want to deal with; and doesn’t want the optics of; the serious issue surrounding the activist jury foreperson, Tomeka Hart, prior to delivering her sentence.

Within the process to deal with Stone’s motion for a new trial, judge Berman-Jackson knows the petition would involve bringing in Tomeka Hart to her courtroom for questioning.  The judge doesn’t want that damaging political optic prior to delivering her sentence.  Obviously, such an appearance begs the question of how poorly Judge Berman-Jackson handled jury selection.  This CYA is a seriously political and sketchy decision.

Judge Amy Berman-Jackson will pass her sentence on Stone, and then take up the issue of a new trial *AFTER* the sentence is announced.  As a consequence the judge will not carry out execution of the sentence until the Tomeka Hart issues are addressed.  FUBAR.

WASHINGTON – […] In a 12-minute conference call with the defense and prosecution teams on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she will still hand down Stone’s sentence at Thursday’s hearing, but indicated she plans to defer the execution of the sentence until the court addresses Stone’s request for a new trial.

[…] Prosecutors told Jackson they were in favor of moving forward with Thursday’s sentencing as planned. But Seth Ginsburg, a lawyer for Stone, argued they should hold off until the motions before the court are fully addressed.

“This issue goes to the heart of this case,” Ginsburg said. “It should be resolved before any further proceedings are had.”

[…] Two newly assigned prosecutors on the case — John Crabb Jr. and J.P. Cooney — made their debuts on behalf of the government on Tuesday. (read more)

And what is “J.P. Cooney’s most recent claim to public fame?…

Lawyers representing Michael Flynn presented a strong argument today (pdf below) in reply to the governments’ continued efforts to refute prosecutorial wrongdoing.

Within the reply motion Sidney Powell highlights the conduct of prosecutor Brandon Van Grack and hypocrisy within the government arguments: “Mr. Van Grack’s contention that he satisfied the government’s obligations by providing this information before Mr. Flynn’s sentencing now proves the point that he suppressed it when it was most important to Mr. Flynn: before his guilty plea on December 1, 2017, and before what was scheduled to be his sentencing on December 18, 2018.”

Prosecutor Van Grack suppressed evidence to protect… “the prosecutors, his team, and the cadre of malfeasant FBI agents from the discovery of their negligence, crimes, and wrongs.”

The tone of the reply motion reads like the Flynn defense is chomping at the bit to take this case to trial. Perhaps that is a strategy to add weight to their dismissal argument; or perhaps that is a reflection of defense confidence they can highlight all of the abuses at trial.

The entire briefing is worth a good read and it includes some good timeline information to emphasize the abuses.

Here’s the reply motion:

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When the FISA Court responded to the DOJ Inspector General report in December and January 2020 they requested an action plan from the DOJ and FBI to respond to the issues raised about misrepresentations to the court.

The DOJ/FBI replied to the FISA Court admitting the last two FISA renewals (April, June ’17) used against Carter Page were insufficiency predicated while withholding opinion on the original application (Oct ’16) and first renewal (Jan ’17).

To address the consequences of fraudulently obtained FISA warrants the DOJ and FBI informed the court they would begin a process to “sequester” all collected evidence from all four FISA warrants. [FISA COURT LINK]

Sequestering the evidence is essentially a search for what investigative material the FISA warrants were used to obtain; ie. the search for the fruit of the poisoned tree; and then a review of all DOJ/FBI cases that may have utilized that investigative material.

In late January the DOJ contacted the FISA court and asked for an extension to the deadline.  The FISA court granted an extension until February 5th [LINK]  The response from the DOJ has not yet been declassified or released by the FISC for public review.

However, with recent media reporting of AG Barr using “outside prosecutors” to review current, former and ongoing cases, it simply makes sense this ‘outsider’ effort is part of the DOJ/FBI sequestration review.

If you consider that several DOJ offices may be involved with the material under review, including the Southern District of New York; The Eastern District of New York; The Eastern District of Virginia; The Washington DC District, and even Main Justice itself; it makes sense that outside DOJ personnel would be needed for this review.

Additionally, all of the various FBI field offices who may have used the FISA authorizations as the underpinning evidence to gain separate Title-1 and/or Title-3 warrants, wiretaps or National Security Letters, in their various investigative cases would also need to be reviewed.   This is an aspect the media is not discussing while they write opinions about AG Bill Barr bringing in outside DOJ attorneys.

The media are framing the use of outside attorneys as Bill Barr working on behalf of President Trump to undermine current and former prosecutions.  However, understanding the FISC order requiring the sequestration effort, the use of outsiders is absolutely necessary.

The same U.S. Attorneys, prosecutors and FBI agents who used evidence gathered from the FISA warrants cannot be the same attorneys, agents and prosecutors making decisions about what parts of the warrants were used to gather evidence and how each part of any case was assembled by the use therein.  It is a simple matter of a conflict of interest.

Additionally, the Robert Mueller team of FBI investigators and special counsel prosecutors certainly used the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants as part of their investigative evidence collection.   Common sense would tell us this had to be the case or the FBI and Mueller team would not have requested renewals of the FISA warrant.

If the FBI & Special Counsel were not using the FISA warrant(s) to capture information, they would not have needed them renewed.  Despite media spin to the contrary, the simple truth of renewals holding investigative value is evident in the renewal itself (ie. common sense).

Under this rather extensive effort to find exactly which investigations -over the course of three years- were touched directly, or indirectly, by the four FISA warrants; and/or which investigative paths may have been influenced downstream or enhanced -by varying degrees of importance- by evidence stemming from the FISA warrants; a reasonable person could see how AG Bill Barr would need to put a team together to retrace the investigative steps and make the sequestration determinations.

Obviously, for reasons of biased intent, corporate left-wing media would like to ignore why outside prosecutors are needed under this framework.  Ignored in part because honest reporting would require an admission the FISA warrants were fraudulently obtained; and in part because the left-wing media have never informed the public of the DOJ/FBI sequestration effort in the first place.  Likely more than half the country has no idea the DOJ and FBI have been told to go find the material.

There have been numerous articles, thousands of words, and endless hours of pundit protestations about Bill Barr using outside DC lawyers to review all of the previous DOJ Attorney activities; yet not a single time have they ever acknowledged the originating order from the FISA court requiring the DOJ/FBI to conduct the review.   Imagine that?

New York Times – Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said. The team includes at least one prosecutor from the office of the United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, as well as prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen. (more)

Lastly, perhaps within this process we can finally get an answer as to what legal justification Robert Mueller and the Special Counsel team used in order to gain access to all of the Trump transition team communications; which included attorney-client privileged material.

This issue from late 2017 was ignored by the mainstream media at the height of their willful blindness toward any corruption within the Mueller team:

FULL letter outlining the issues:

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Resources:

FISA Court Order – Requiring DOJ Response

FISA Court Order – Granting extension until Feb 5, 2020.

LINK to FISA Court Public Records