Right-wing media figures who are attacking Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who recently sentenced Trump confidant and friend Roger Stone to prison, either don’t understand the basic mechanisms of the federal legal system or don’t want their viewers to.

On February 20, Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison after a jury convicted him of seven charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, including lying to Congress, obstructing an official proceeding, and witness tampering. Jackson, however, put a decision on hold about when Stone would report to prison while she considers a motion from Stone’s legal team for a new trial based on a claim that the jury foreperson was biased against Stone.

A hearing was held on that topic on February 25 and Jackson has yet to rule, though according to Politico she “appears headed toward dismissing the defendant’s motion for a new trial” after Stone’s legal team failed to make a convincing argument. In any case, Trump has signaled that he is receptive to calls from Stone’s right-wing media defenders to issue a pardon that would eliminate Stone’s prison sentence. According to Seth Cousins, who served on the jury, the foreperson actually “expressed skepticism at some of the government’s claims and was one of the last people to vote to convict on the charge that took most of our deliberation time.” Cousins also wrote that the foreperson “oversaw a rigorous process, slowing us down on several occasions and advocating for the rights of the defendant.” Still, Stone’s allies and Trump himself have waged a public campaign against the foreperson, including during yesterday’s hearing.

In addition to attacks on the foreperson, Stone defenders are launching attacks on Jackson herself, including baselessly calling into question her impartiality and even spreading falsehoods about how Jackson would conduct the post-conviction retrial hearing.

During his February 25 radio broadcast, Fox News host Sean Hannity said, “You had a political activist judge running the show, the same judge in the [Paul] Manafort case,” before asking, “How is it these judges, lifetime appointments, they get away with murder?” Similarly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson scandalized the fact that Jackson “was appointed by Barack Obama” in order to call her “an openly partisan Democrat.” He also said that she is “a disgrace to the judiciary” and is “corrupt, dishonest and authoritarian.”

It is a basic fact of our political system that federal judges are nominated by presidents who are members of political parties and these judges serve lifetime appointments “during good behavior.” And it’s a basic fact of life that some criminal defendants will be charged with federal crimes that arise out of political matters, which is what happened in Stone’s case. There is a simple reason that Jackson is presiding over both the Stone and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort cases. She was randomly assigned the Manafort case and it is the standard practice of the federal judiciary system to then give judges any other cases that may have overlapping evidence.

Prior to being assigned a number of cases stemming from the Mueller investigation, Jackson sentenced a high-profile political figure to prison -- a Democrat -- and arguably showed less leniency than she did in Stone’s case.

In 2013, Jackson sentenced former member of Congress Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) to 30 months in prison and fined him $750,000 after a jury convicted him of illegally using campaign funds. Prosecutors had recommended Jackson Jr. spend four years in prison, meaning Jackson sentenced him to 63% of the time prosecutors requested. While senior officials of the Justice Department interfered in the sentencing recommendation against Stone, when the sentencing hearing took place, newly assigned prosecutors to the case ended up defending the initial recommendation of seven to nine years. Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison, or 37-47% of what prosecutors asked for. Stone was fined $20,000.

False information about how Jackson would conduct the hearing for a new trial was also broadcast on Fox News by its chief legal analyst Andrew Napolitano. During a February 25 appearance hours before the hearing, Napolitano joined Fox & Friends and characterized the hearing as “secret” while claiming Jackson “won’t give a reason why” and saying, “You combine secrecy and silence and that is a recipe for totalitarianism.”

The publicly available docket for Stone’s trial shows that wasn’t the case: