Fox News host attacks Roger Stone jury foreman while broadcasting her Twitter account details

Tucker Carlson blasts accusation that juror is an ‘anti-Trump zealot’ to millions of people

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has attacked one of the jurors who convicted Roger Stone while sharing her social media details to millions of people after she spoke out in support of Justice Department prosecutors.

Tomeka Hart, who served as the foreperson of the jury that found Mr Stone guilty of seven counts including witness tampering and lying to investigators, initially planned to keep quiet on her involvement in the case for fear of retribution.

However, when four career prosecutors withdrew from the case after Donald Trump was accused of pressuring the Justice Department into offering up a softer sentence for his former adviser, she decided to speak out in a Facebook post praising their stand.

Her intervention has brought to light a series of posts critical of Mr Trump and his aides – prompting anger from right wing figures including the Tucker Carlson Tonight host who accused her of being an “anti-Trump zealot”.

Mr Carlson, whose show reaches an average of 4.7 million viewers, kept Ms Hart’s personal details - including her twitter handle and her home city - on screen for a full minute as he accused her of lying to the judge over her impartiality.

He told his audience “During the jury selection process at Roger Stone’s trial lawyers asked the eventual foreman of the jury if there was anything that would affect her ability to judge Stone fairly.

"‘No,’ she claimed, she hadn’t paid much attention to the Russia probe. That turned out to be a lie, and a stupid one at that.”

While such questions do routinely make up part of the jury selection process, it is unclear if there is any evidence to support the TV pundit’s claim Ms Hart misled the judge ahead of the case.

Mr Carlson added: “She’s an anti-Trump zealot who closely followed the Muller investigation… this is not a neutral person. This is not someone capable of judging this trial fairly. This is a partisan who lied about who she was.”

He went on to imply some blame for the guilty verdict – which was agreed unanimously by the 12-person jury - lay at the foot of the “Obama appointed judge” who allowed Ms Hart to oversee the jury process.

In the now-deleted comment reprinted by US publication Commercial Appeal Ms Hart, a former labour lawyer, said she wanted to “stand up” for the prosecutors who, she believed, had “acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice”.

However the employee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who has made multiple donations to Democratic presidential candidates, has since come under fire for tweets criticising the Trump administration – referring to him as the “klan president” while appearing to endorse the Mueller investigation which eventually implicated Mr Stone.

While not mentioning her by name, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter in reference to Fox News coverage of Ms Hart: “Now it looks like the fore person in the jury, in the Roger Stone case, had significant bias. Add that to everything else, and this is not looking good for the ‘Justice’ Department.”

While Ms Hart appears to have removed a number of posts referencing her latest contributions to Commercial Appeal from November last year, she has been targeted by hundreds of critical tweets from supporters of the president since revealing her involvement in the case.

Lawyers for Mr Stone are now considering whether the posts are enough to push for a retrial of the 67-year-old, who first made his name working on the Nixon campaign when he was implicated in the Watergate scandal but not found to have broken any laws.

Attorney Grant Smith told CNBC: “We are reviewing all of the recently posted new information, and we will evaluate and take the appropriate action.”