Are courtroom sketches even allowed to preside?
Fox News is doing its part to help unleash the Trump Flying Monkey Brigadeon the targets of the moment, the judges involved in Paul Manafort's indictment. In a piece with no byline, Fox asks the truly important question, "Who are Deborah A. Robinson and Amy Berman Jackson?" Clearly, they are very biased people who are out to destroy America.
Of Judge Deborah A. Robinson, whom Fox couldn't even find a photo of, we learn that she is almost certainly not to be trusted, even though her role in the case is very limited: As the preliminary judge, her only involvement with defendants Paul Manafort and Rick Gates was during their preliminary hearing, in which she ruled they should be held under house arrest, set their bonds, and required that they turn in their passports. But she certainly has "experienced the criminal justice system firsthand," says the anonymous Fox character assassin, noting that her son "was of dealing heroin." Citing (but not properly linking to) a 2009 piece in "Tickle the Wire," we learn some very important facts about Judge Robinson:
In 2014, she watched her son, Philip Robinson Winkfield, get led away in handcuffs after he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for possession of heroin and intent to distribute, Tickle the Wire reported.
If you want to get all nit-picky like a feminist, that conviction was in 2009, not 2014.
Also, Judge Robinson is black, so it's very important that Fox point out she also played a role in "cases involving former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and NBA player Allen Iverson," and did you know they were black, too? She also increased a fine for Bill Clinton aide Sandy Berger, and even was involved in the case of Scooter Libby, so that probably means she... uh... is a judge? And she's connected to two former presidents: DEEP STATE! But was she smoking heroin while trying to take down Donald Trump? That's what we need to know.
As for the judge who'll actually preside over Manafort's prosecution, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, she's clearly unfit, since she was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama (and if you want to get all technical about it, was confirmed 97-0 by the Senate -- but a lot of those votes were from Democrats ). Worse, she's clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton:
Earlier this year, Jackson -- a Harvard Law School graduate -- dismissed a lawsuit brought against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by relatives of victims of the 2012 Benghazi attack [...]
“Her actions – communicating with other State Department personnel and advisers about the official business of the department – fall squarely within the scope of her duty to run the Department and conduct the foreign affairs of the nation as Secretary of State,” Jackson wrote in a ruling.
Worse, Jackson contributed $1000 to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992, when she was an attorney in private practice, but obviously she should have known that she might be appointed to the federal judiciary 19 years later, and now she has to recuse herself. For some reason, Fox didn't even mention Jackson's son, who was a contestant on Jeopardy! two years ago. There has to be something suspicious about that, no?
Big surprise! The Usual Assholes are already crying about the unspeakably corrupt judges in the Manafort case. Birther Supreme Dr. Jerome Corsi, PhD, can't believe this travesty of justice:
The Drudge Report was ON IT, too, and thanks to Fox's choice of a featured image for Twitter, everyone's encouraged to think Robinson, who has the far smaller role in the proceedings, is the trial judge who donated to "Clinton" (Bill, not Hillary, and almost 20 years before becoming a federal judge):
And Great Legal Scholar Larry Klayman has this keen insight:
But is she a Jew, Larry? Is she? You're getting sloppy, dude.
So obviously, the narrative has been set: The judges in this case are unspeakably biased, and there is no justice to be had for poor Donald Trump, because the system is rotten to the core. Here's hoping both judges are getting decent security from the DEEP STATE, because there are plenty of knuckleheads already barking about the "biased" judges out there.
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[ ThinkProgress / FoxNews ]
It's been a long day, so all I have to say is, "Fuck those people."
The judges will be bleeding out the whatever's. Sad