By Chris Sommerfeldt
New York Daily News
Roger Stone took aim at the federal judge overseeing his criminal case on Monday, blasting her as an “Obama appointed” partisan and posting a photo of her face featuring what appeared to be a crosshairs symbol.
The embattled confidant to President Donald Trump posted the picture of Washington, D.C., Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Instagram but quickly deleted it after the New York Daily News reached out and asked about the apparent rifle scope symbol in the upper left-hand corner.
Stone, who was indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation last month, claimed he “didn’t notice the symbol in the corner.”
“I saw no such thing,” Stone told the Daily News. “It is simply a photo of the judge off the Internet.”
Minutes later, Stone deleted the photo and replaced it with one cropping out the crosshairs.
“Through legal trickery, Deep State hitman Robert Mueller has guaranteed that my upcoming show trial is before Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointed Judge who dismissed the Benghazi charges against Hillary Clinton and incarcerated Paul Manafort prior to his conviction for any crime,” Stone captioned the since-deleted post, which also requested that people donate to his legal defense fund.
Stone, 66, fired off the missive even though Jackson issued a gag order in his case Friday, barring him and his legal team from making any public statements that could “pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to this case.”
Stone, whose indictment stems from his 2016 contacts with WikiLeaks, shrugged off the gag order Monday and said his attorney had told him the Instagram post was not in violation.
“My criticism is of the manner in which my case was mandated before a specific judge rather than randomly,” Stone said. “There can be no misinterpretation since I didn’t notice the symbol in the corner.”
Stone’s Hillary Clinton comment appeared to reference Jackson’s dismissal of a wrongful death lawsuit against the former secretary of state filed in 2017 by the families of two U.S. citizens killed in the 2012 attack at the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, has gained some national attention since Mueller began his investigation into possible collusion between Russians and Trump associates ahead of the 2016 election.
She has overseen Paul Manafort’s high-profile case and ordered the disgraced one-time Trump campaign chairman behind bars after she ruled he had tried to tamper with witnesses in the special counsel’s investigation.
Stone remains free on $250,000 bond.
