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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Hold on there, Sparky. You just said she was not "supposed" to say anything.

She's supposed to stick to that which is proven in front of her and not opine about what third parties did or didn't do. But she is free to do or say whatever the hell she likes. If it violates an ethics rule, that's one concerns for her. If it provides Trump cover to commute, that's another result. (Maybe she doesn't care either way... I don't know. In any case, caveat emptor.)

Now you're just talking about what is "prudent" to avoid have Trump supporters attack her. (By that standard, she should have called the charges against Stone a Ukrainian plot.)

I assume, like any rational person, she'd prefer her sentencing not provide a colorable argument for appeal or commutation. But I'm assuming there. maybe she doesn't care.

So you did just make up a new rule about what judges are "supposed" to say, one that applies only when political allies of the President are on trial.

You're flailing now. I offered no rule. I said her purview was limited to what was before her. Which it generally is. You don't go before a judge on a murder charge and find yourself convicted of selling weed in college. I then wondered why this judge would screw up and give Trump cover as she did. She could have avoided saying "cover up" and robbed Stone of the bias argument on appeal, and Trump of the bias argument in support of commutation.

If you'd like to put words in my mouth and argue with your private version of me, start another thread.

She is not "free to say whatever she wants." There are laws and canons of judicial ethics that govern how she runs her court. But she didn't actually do anything that violated those. The people attacking her for trumped-up political reasons are full of shit.

The test isn't whether she violated something. It's whether she gave Stone and Trump an argument for appeal and commutation I do not think she desired to provide. I'm not attacking her. I'm critiquing her and wondering why she did that. It's not wise strategy. I personally think it was just a gaffe, and she meant to say "You were trying to slow down and hobble the investigation." That is true. Stone volunteered to appear and then lied.

Thanks, you are the one who said that she referred to the cover up without having any evidence, so presumably you are already familiar with the evidence in Stone's trial and the several other trials that she has presided over connecting to Mueller's probe.

What does she know that Mueller does not? Mueller could only find illegal or unethical acts on the part of Trump related to obstruction. The Stone trial did not involve allegations Stone lied about Trump's efforts at obstruction. It involved Stone lying about connections to Wikileaks and efforts to get Russian dirt on Clinton.

This means she could not know any more than Mueller about illegal or unethical acts by Trump regarding collusion. And Mueller did not find Trump engaged in any illegal or unethical acts in relation to collusion.

So Berman was, unequivocally, offering an opinion assuming facts no one knows (and which may not even exist).

Before I repeat your presumably extensive efforts to learn those facts before you accused a federal judge of bias, why don't you tell me what you've done to satisfy yourself that the judge didn't know what she was talking about.

I just did that in the last section of this.

Oh, so there is an evidentiary basis for Jackson to say that Stone was covering up for the President? That'll be news to, uh, you.

See above. Stone was lying about facts related to collusion. Mueller only found evidence regarding bad acts of Trump related to obstruction. Two different things.

When she turns on her afterburners, she's a fighter plane. But saying that Stone was covering up for Trump doesn't necessarily mean that Trump was doing something illegal or unethical. It could just be that he was doing something he didn't want public. Which is how reasonable people understood, people who weren't working hard to manufacture a grievance against her.

I agree. I've said numerous times here that I don't think she meant to say what she said the way she said it. But the words came out the way they did, and unfortunately for her, the black letter of them allows an adversary to use them to raise the specter of bias. And more importantly, it allows the President to justify -thinly, but thin is all one needs - a commutation.

Berman had zero margin for error if she wanted to avoid providing Trump and Stone with arguments to appeal or commute. Maybe she didn't care. I don't know. But I assume her rational, and if I were her, I'd care. I'd be annoyed a single gaffe could significantly contribute to getting an asshole who drove me nuts for the past year a commutation.