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    Roger Stone calls for ‘armed guards’ at polling spots in leaked video

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    The longtime Donald Trump ally and friend Roger Stone said Republicans should send “armed guards” to the polls in November to ensure a Trump victory, according to video footage by an undercover journalist.The video, first published by Rolling Stone, shows an embittered Stone, still angry about the 2020 election and ready to fight in 2024. Stone described the former US president’s legal strategy of constant litigation to purge voter rolls in swing states.“We gotta fight it out on a state-by-state basis,” said Stone. “We’re already in court in Wisconsin, we’re already in court in Florida.”When the journalist, posing as a member of a rightwing voter turnout organization, pressed Stone for details on efforts to make sure Trump wins in 2024, Stone told him that the campaign has to “be ready”.“When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you dispute it,” said Stone. In Detroit in 2020, there was a chaotic scene at a ballot counting center when GOP vote challengers pounded on the walls of the center and demanded to be let in.Filmed at an August event in Jacksonville, Florida, called A Night with Roger Stone, the footage also reveals Stone’s lasting anger toward former attorney general Bill Barr, who he calls “a traitorous piece of human garbage”.While in office, Barr acted as a staunch Trump ally, even pushing for a lighter sentence for Stone, when the operative was found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice in connection with a congressional inquiry into Russian interference during the 2016 election. Barr lost favor with the former president when he declined to publicly back Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, drawing outrage from Trump’s closest allies.“Once we get back in, he has to go to prison,” Stone exclaimed. “He has to go to prison, he’s a criminal.”Stone’s apparent lust for legal retribution echoes Trump’s own vow, which he has stated repeatedly to the press and at his rallies, to prosecute his political opponents. It is a promise that Trump could more likely make good on, given the supreme court’s rulings this year to expand the powers of the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe journalist in the video was posing as someone involved with Lion of Judah, a rightwing effort to recruit election-skeptical Christians to enlist as poll workers in swing states in order to collect evidence of voter fraud.Joshua Standifer, who leads Lion of Judah, describes the effort as a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers”. In the video, Stone appeared unfamiliar with Standifer or his work. More

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      A Storm Foretold review – a terrifying glimpse into Trump’s time in the White House

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      The most immediately convincing words out of the subject’s mouth in A Storm Foretold are when he is threatening the director. “Obviously,” says Roger Stone to Danish film-maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen at the end of an anti-Trump rant, “if you use any of that I’ll murder you.”As Guldbrandsen notes earlier in the film, their relationship is complicated.The 90-minute documentary follows Donald Trump’s longtime ally – friend, possibly, if either man is capable of friendship – and political adviser for three years from 2019 to 2022. Except, that is, for a short hiatus when Stone switches allegiance to another crew and cuts Guldbrandsen off, the stress of which surely contributes to the Dane’s ensuing heart attack. It’s a busy time for Stone. He splits his time between using diatribes on Infowars to inflame his boss’s base with a hatred for liberals – who, naturally, are in love with “rapist” Bill Clinton and his supposed accessory to the crimes, Hillary – and managing a manchild president who throws tantrums if he feels he is being managed at all. Stone describes, for instance, how, if he wants Trump to say something in particular, he tells him that he needs to use a line in a speech that he used brilliantly before. “Doesn’t matter if he never said it.” It’s one of several terrifying glimpses into the internal mechanics of Trump’s time in office and the scope of its – and his – inadequacies. Such is the destabilising force of these revelations that you start to feel almost grateful that there was someone recognisably politician-like in the mix. Stone is just as arrogant, vain, bullying and thuggish. But he has a genuine analytical intelligence running alongside the same populist touch, instinctive animal cunning and talent for geeing up a crowd that Trump has. You feel glad someone somewhere knows what they are doing, even if everything they are doing is awful and bent on destroying democracy. Like I say – it’s a very destabilising documentary.We watch as Trump’s election campaign is investigated for interference by Russia and Stone goes on trial for allegedly covering up Trump’s various improprieties. He is convicted but his sentence is commuted by Trump, though Stone had been confident of a full pardon.We follow Stone through 2020 as he prepares the backup plan for the increasingly likely event that Trump loses the election to Joe Biden: the “Stop the Steal” campaign that will, we know, culminate in a march on Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021 and an outbreak of violence that essentially amounts to an insurrection. He rallies the troops, especially the rightwing group known as the Proud Boys, who have appointed themselves his voluntary security force and seem to worship him with almost as much fervour as they do Trump himself. Stone strides on, dropping jokes about it being “Shoot a Liberal for Christ” day and, like a jovial barracuda, reckoning they should “fuck the voting – let’s get right to the violence”, advising crowds on “what you can do for the Republic”, turning truths into plausible lies and generally fostering the tension, conspiracy theories, fear and sense of powerlessness (“a thousand years of darkness” will follow a Democrat win) that fuels the Maga membership. When Biden does win, they are assured that Trump won and the lie falls on perfectly prepared ground. The march takes place, the Capitol is breached, lives are lost and hundreds injured.Trump abandons Stone during the fallout. It turns out that a face contorting with rage is not just something that happens in books. In the back of Guldbrandsen’s car, Stone’s face twists and tics as if snakes are rising from his soul. He denounces Trump, says he will support impeachment charges against the “cocksucker” who “surrounded himself with morons … Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.”It’s a scene that, in the damage it potentially does to his cause – the preservation and exaltation of Roger Stone in the coming new New World – crystallises the question floating throughout the film: why did he agree to it? Why didn’t he get one of any number of patsies who would have been delighted with an all-access three years and delivered a pile of fawning goods at the end of it? What kind of documentary was he expecting from a serious film-maker such as Guldbrandsen? Did he think he could fool him or win him over? Does he actually believe in the cause and want it legitimised in the mainstream media? How deep do the arrogance and delusion run?Guldbrandsen pushes him on little – that’s the price you pay for that all-access pass – though his voiceover generally clarifies his stance, or points up Stone’s latest hypocrisy. But, by the end of a film full of jaw-dropping footage of what seem to be very incriminating moments for Stone personally and Trumpism generally, it comes together as a terrifying testimony to the deliberate nature of the destruction of the literal and metaphorical fabric of US politics. It is also an even more terrifying poser of the question – what storms are yet to come?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion More

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      Convicted criminals take Republican stage despite focus on ‘law and order’

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      The Republican party that promised in its 2024 policy platform to restore “law and order” as a “pillar” of “American civilisation” packed up and left Milwaukee on Friday after a convention featuring numerous felons.The most prominent was the keynote speaker: Donald Trump, the former president turned nominee who in May was convicted in New York on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star.Trump also awaits trial on at least 14 and as many as 54 other criminal charges, and in addition has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in civil cases for business fraud and defamation arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.But there was also Peter Navarro, once Trump’s trade adviser, who addressed the convention on Wednesday fresh out of a Florida jail where he served four months for criminal contempt of Congress.“I went to prison so you won’t have to,” declared Navarro – who was convicted for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House January 6 committee – to a jubilant crowd that responded with a standing ovation.Another former Trump aide turned convicted criminal in attendance was Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. Three years later he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges including bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and witness tampering, arising from the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.In 2020 Trump pardoned Manafort, who later wrote a memoir called Political Prisoner. At the convention, Manafort was briefly linked with an organising role before backing off, though he was still in Milwaukee to tell Fox News: “I’ve done 10 conventions. This is the best.”Roger Stone, who like Manafort is a longtime operative convicted on charges arising from the Russia investigation, was also at the convention in Milwaukee.Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison after being convicted of criminal charges including witness tampering and obstructing Congress. He never set foot in jail, as Trump commuted his sentence.Rod Blagojevich attended as well. In July 2011, the former Democratic governor of Illinois was convicted on 17 criminal charges, including bribery, fraud and extortion, arising from an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s US Senate seat.Blagojevich was jailed for 14 years. In 2020, Trump commuted his sentence. This week, Blagojevich told NBC: “I think President Trump is the most demonised political figure in American history, and I know something about being demonised.”Another former Trump aide jailed for criminal contempt of Congress over January 6 did not make it to the convention hall, but Steve Bannon was getting updates via phone from his daughter in Wisconsin to his federal prison in Connecticut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He’s doing good,” Maureen Bannon told Politico. “He’s able to see the news in there. Read. We can email him articles. So he’s still getting a sense of what’s going on while he’s a political prisoner.”The irony of “the party of law and order” being led by one criminal and welcoming other criminals was not lost on many observers.One of the defining elements of authoritarianism is selective application of the law,” wrote Will Saletan in the Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative publication.“In fascist movements, ‘law and order’ is invoked against scapegoats and political enemies, while the leader and his allies are exempt from legal accountability.“This distinction has become central to Donald Trump’s Republican party.” More

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      Roger Stone should be prosecuted, says Democrat he allegedly threatened to kill

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      The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell has called for the rightwing activist and Trump ally Roger Stone to be prosecuted over an alleged death threat he also made against Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York.Asked by Scripps News if he wanted Stone to be prosecuted, Swalwell said: “Yes, I absolutely do. I know [the] aim [of the threat] is to not just threaten and in this case take a specific action, but its aim is to silence Donald Trump’s critics.”Stone, 71, is a longtime Republican operative and self-proclaimed dirty trickster, long close to Trump and involved in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Last week, Mediaite said it had obtained a recording from shortly before the election in which Stone told an associate, then a New York police officer: “It’s time to do it.“Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit any more.”Swalwell and Nadler were prominent Trump opponents during his time in office. In 2020, as chair of the House judiciary committee, Nadler said he would investigate Trump’s commutation of a jail sentence handed to Stone for obstructing the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.This week, Nadler said he had been in communication with US Capitol police and the FBI about Stone’s alleged remark.On Thursday, Swalwell told Scripps: “The message I send to Roger Stone is: ‘I’m not going away.’ We’re not going to be intimidated. We must be a country where we settle our scores not with violence, but with voting.”Stone says the recording is a fake, while his associate, Sal Greco, has dismissed it as “political fodder”.Stone’s lawyer, David Schoen – who defended Trump in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – told Scripps Stone had had “two experts look at” the recording.“It’s a 92% chance or higher that it’s AI-generated,” Schoen said. “I’m sure that if he said it, that he didn’t mean literally those words. He doesn’t speak that way. He’s got zero history of violence, ever. I know him pretty well, and I think it’s an absolutely crazy charge.” More

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      The pro-Trump pastors embracing ‘overt white Christian nationalism’

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      A far-right religious group with ties to Donald Trump loyalists Roger Stone and retired Army Lt Gen Michael Flynn, is planning events with pastors in swing state churches in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to spur more evangelical backing for the former US president’s 2024 campaign.But the group, Pastors for Trump, is drawing sharp rebukes from mainstream Christian leaders for being extremist, distorting Christian teachings and endangering American democracy, by fueling the spread of Christian nationalism.The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based evangelical pastor and businessman Jackson Lahmeyer leads the fledgling Pastors for Trump organization. Lahmeyer told the Guardian it boasts over 7,000 pastors as members and that he will unveil details about its plans on 11 May at the Trump National Doral in Miami, an event Trump will be invited to attend.Stone, a self styled “dirty trickster” who Trump pardoned after he was convicted of lying to Congress, is slated to join Lahmeyer in speaking on 11 May according to the pastor. Lahmeyer added he will talk more about his pro Trump group at a ReAwaken America evangelical gathering on 12 and 13 May at the Doral.Lahmeyer said the pastors group intends to sponsor a “freedom tour” with evening church meetings in key swing states this summer, an effort that could help Trump win more backing from this key Republican voting bloc which could prove crucial to his winning the GOP nomination again.Lahmeyer described the genesis of Pastors for Trump in dark and apocalyptic rhetoric that has echoes of Trump’s own bombast. “We’re going down a very evil path in this country,” he said. “Our economy is being destroyed. It’s China, the deep state and globalists.“China interfered in our 2020 elections,” he added. “This is biblical what’s happening. This is a spiritual battle.’But those ominous beliefs have drawn sharp criticism.“This kind of overt embrace of white Christian nationalism continues to pose a growing threat to the witness of the church and the health of our democracy,” said Adam Russell Taylor, the president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners.“This pastor and this effort are trying to impose a Christian theocracy. It’s imperative that Christian leaders of all backgrounds including conservative ones speak out about this effort as a threat to our democracy and to the church.”Other religious leaders warn of dangers that Pastors for Trump poses by marrying Christian nationalism with political vitriol and election lies.“For years, Trump has tried to co-opt religious leaders to serve his campaign, even attempting to change long-standing tax law to allow dark money to flow through houses of worship,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.“Tragically, far too many pastors have confused political power with religious authority and have thrown their lot in with Trump, no matter the cost to their ministry. Pastors for Trump is the next step in this unholy alliance, mixing Christian nationalism, election lies and vitriolic language in a gross distortion of Christianity.”There’s ample evidence that Lahmeyer has embraced religious and political views replete with extremist positions.Lahmeyer has previously attacked former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “demon”, and former Covid 19 adviser Anthony Fauci “a mass murdering Luciferian”. To Lahmeyer, the attack on the Capitol on January 6 by a mob of pro Trump supporters was an “FBI Inside Job”.Besides his apocalyptic rhetoric, Lahmeyer’s effort has echoes of the two-year-old ReAwaken America tour that has combined election denialism with Christian Nationalism and regularly featured Flynn at its two day revival style meetings.In 2021, Flynn provided strong and early backing for Lahmeyer in an abortive primary campaign by the pastor to gain the Republican nomination for a Senate seat from Oklahoma.Flynn, who worked to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by pushing bogus claims of election fraud and who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russians before briefly serving as Trump’s national security adviser, is a real hero in Lahmeyer’s eyes.“Flynn is a leader and general,” Lahmeyer told the Guardian. “I trust him and I have come to love him. He’s been like a father to me.”Those bonds were reinforced in early 2021 when Lahmeyer introduced Flynn to Clay Clark, an Oklahoma entrepreneur and a member of his church, who teamed up with Flynn to host some twenty ReAwaken revival-like gatherings over the last two years nationwide, all of which Lahmeyer said he’s attended.Late last year, Lahmeyer unveiled Pastors for Trump on Stone’s eponymous Stone Zone podcast, a relationship that was forged in 2021 when Stone served as a key paid consultant to Lahmeyer’s primary campaign.Pastors for Trump is “interwoven” with the Trump campaign, “but we’re a separate grassroots group”, Lahmeyer said, indicating it is a 501(c)(4) non profit social welfare, which is awaiting IRS tax status approval.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo date, the pastors group has created a two person board that includes South Carolina pastor Mark Burns, a key Trump campaign religious adviser who backed Trump’s 2016 run and who told the Guardian that he’s a “spiritual adviser” to Trump.Lahmeyer said his group hopes to arrange an event in Las Vegas in August to coincide with a ReAwaken America gathering that’s scheduled there, and that he expects to start fundraising to increase his group’s membership and activism.Asked if Stone and Flynn may participate in the various swing state church gatherings, Lahmeyer said: “I’d be dumb not to ask them. Stone and General Flynn are huge supporters.”To push the group’s pro-Trump messages, Lahmeyer has arranged a few prayer calls in recent months that have included Stone, Flynn and ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, all of whom promoted bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and tried to help Trump overturn his loss to Joe Biden.One call that included a segment with Trump in late March which Lahmeyer hosted and that Stone and Flynn participated in, went badly awry when the sound quality was interrupted for several minutes with Trump on the line.Lahmeyer told the Stone Zone the next day that trolls had infiltrated the “backstage” of the platform they were using, while Trump fingered the “radical left” for hacking his phone when he tried to join the call.The launch of Pastors for Trump came not long after an uptick in public criticism of Trump from some evangelical leaders that suggested waning support among evangelicals.Dr Everett Piper, the ex president of a Christian university, in November wrote an op-ed entitled “It’s time for the GOP to say it: Donald Trump is hurting us, not helping us.” Piper wrote that in the 2022 midterms Trump “hindered rather than helped the much-anticipated ‘red wave’”.Likewise, the Iowa based president and CEO of the Family Leader Bob Vander Plaats, has tweeted about Trump that “It’s time to turn the page. America must move on. Walk off the stage with class.”Little wonder that in January, Trump blasted evangelical leaders who publicly criticized his new campaign for their “disloyalty”.Some scholars and recent polls, however, suggest Trump still has very significant support in the evangelical circles, and that he should garner hefty support again from evangelical voters in the primaries if he’s the nominee.“Trump’s enduring appeal to evangelicals is the greatest single triumph of identity politics in modern American history,” David Hollinger, an emeritus history professor at Berkeley and the author of Christianity’s American Fate, told the Guardian. “The evangelicals who flocked to Trump have good reason to stay with him.”Still, Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee is alarmed at the Pastors for Trump campaign.“Most clergy avoid endorsing political candidates, even in their personal capacity, because they know the polarizing impact it would have on their congregations and the distractions it would cause from their calling and the mission of the church.”Similarly, Taylor of Sojourners says Pastors for Trump is particularly worrisome. “This is further evidence that the threat of muscular white Christian nationalism is real and needs to be counteracted.” More

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      Roger Stone calls Ivanka Trump an 'abortionist bitch' after not getting January 6 pardon – video

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      In a video shown to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone calls Donald Trump’s daughter an ‘abortionist bitch’ amid his fury at not being pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack. The Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and, like her, an adviser to the former president in the White House, ‘has an IQ of 70’. The video was shot by Danish film-maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen and shown in Thursday’s dramatic hearing

      Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video shows More

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      Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video shows

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      Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video showsRepublican operative calls Trump an ‘abortionist bitch’ in video released by film-maker who provided footage to January 6 panel00:29In video released by a Danish film-maker who provided footage to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone, furious he will not be pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack, is seen to call Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch”.Could Trump testify? Subpoena sets up prospect of dramatic political spectacleRead moreThe Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and like her an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, “has an IQ of 70”.The video was shot by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, whose footage of Stone was shown in Thursday’s dramatic January 6 hearing. Then, Stone was shown saying: “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”The clip in which Stone rants about Ivanka and Kushner was selected but not shown by the committee. First reported by the Daily Beast, the clip shows Stone on the phone in the back of a car on a highway, visibly shaking with anger.“Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70,” he says. “He’s coming to Miami. We will eject him from Miami very quickly; he will be leaving very quickly. Very quickly.”Like Donald Trump, Kushner and Ivanka Trump moved to Florida after their time in Washington, rather than move back to New York.Stone continued: “He has 100 security guards. I will have 5,000 security guards. You want to fight. Let’s fight. Fuck you.”Stone added: “Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.”Gulbrandsen, the Beast said, said there was “no doubt” who Stone was talking about.Stone is a strategist, author and self-confessed dirty trickster. He has long been associated with Donald Trump, through the businessman’s many flirtations with politics and since his election win in 2016.In 2019, Stone was indicted during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. The charges related to his links to Trump’s campaign and to WikiLeaks, which released Democratic party emails obtained by Russian hackers on the same day Trump was shown to have bragged about assaulting women.Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison. In December 2020, Trump granted him clemency.Gulbrandsen told the Beast the clip of Stone ranting on his phone was from 20 January 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration.Stone’s activities around the Capitol attack and links to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, far-right groups involved in the riot, have been scrutinised by the January 6 committee. Stone appeared in front of investigators but invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.06:25Gulbrandsen told the Beast: “Roger Stone has been holding out for a pardon till the very last minute. He had first written up a memo … with a plan about encouraging Trump to pardon the lawmakers who had voted against certifying [Biden’s win], and Roger Stone, and some of his clients.”The film-maker said Stone reduced his wishlist to pardons for himself and Bernie Kerik, a close associate, but was “very upset” when no pardon came.Gulbrandsen said: “Aside from Donald Trump [Stone] also held Jared Kushner responsible as being the guy who was the point man on the pardon.”The Beast has also reported that Gulbrandsen recorded Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, telling Stone “the boss still has a very favorable view of you”.Stone said: “I’ll go down hard, though. I’ll fight it right to the bitter end.”Gaetz said: “Yeah, but I don’t think you’re going to go down at all at the end of the day.”Guldbrandsen’s documentary, A Storm Foretold, has been extensively trailed and examined – but not yet released.TopicsRoger StoneUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsIvanka TrumpJared KushnernewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Start smashing pumpkins’: January 6 panel shows Roger Stone discussing violence

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      ‘Start smashing pumpkins’: January 6 panel shows Roger Stone discussing violenceVideo footage obtained from a Danish documentary film-maker shows Trump ally discussing violence after 2020 election The House January 6 committee on Thursday played as promised video footage of the Republican operative and Trump ally Roger Stone discussing the need for violence after the 2020 election, before 6 January 2021, the day of the deadly Capitol attack.“Let’s just hope we’re celebrating,” Stone said, in footage obtained from a Danish documentary film-maker.“I really do suspect that [the election result] will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine tenths of law. ‘No we won, fuck you. Sorry, you’re wrong, fuck you.’”In another clip, Stone said: “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”To laughter, an associate with Stone said: “Start smashing pumpkins, if you know what I mean.”In her opening statement at a hearing officially designated as a business meeting, to set up votes on further investigations, the California Democrat Zoe Lofgren laid out the committee’s interest in Stone.Stone, she said, “is a political operative with a reputation for dirty tricks. In November 2019 he was convicted of lying to Congress and other crimes and sentenced to more than three years in prison. He’s also a longtime adviser to President Trump, and was in communication with President Trump throughout 2020. Mr Trump pardoned Roger Stone on 23 December 2020.”Stone, she said, “apparently knew of Mr Trump’s intentions” to reject the election result long before election day.The congresswoman said: “Although we don’t yet have all the relevant records of Roger Stone’s communications, even Stone’s own social media posts acknowledge that he spoke with Donald Trump on 27 December as preparations for January 6 were under way.”Stone, Lofgren showed, discussed the idea of appointing a special counsel to “ensure those who are attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud are charged and convicted and to ensure Donald Trump continues as our president” – an idea the president is known to have discussed with allies and advisers.Lofgren mentioned links between Stone and the Capitol attack, including his attendance at the Willard hotel the night before January 6, as Trump allies planned their actions the next day, and his links with the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, extremist rightwing groups who led the Capitol riot.“Individuals from both of these organisations have been charged with a crime of seditious conspiracy,” Lofgren said. “… Multiple associates of Roger Stone from both the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with this crime.”Lofgren also played footage of Stone refusing to answer questions from the committee, invoking his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.The committee also played footage of Steve Bannon, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair who became a White House strategist, discussing what would happen on January 6, and revealed a hitherto unseen memo from Tom Fitton, another pro-Trump activist.“The select committee got this pre-prepared statement from the National Archives,” Lofgren said, displaying and describing the draft statement sent by Fitton on 31 October, three days before election day.According to Fitton’s proposed memo, Trump would simply “declare we had an election today and I won”.TopicsUS Capitol attackRoger StoneUS politicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Who is Roger Stone, the Trump ally in the January 6 panel’s crosshairs?

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      Who is Roger Stone, the Trump ally in the January 6 panel’s crosshairs?Flamboyant rightwing strategist and self-confessed dirty trickster expected to be a focus of committee’s latest session At its hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, the House January 6 committee is expected to show footage of Roger Stone, shot by Danish film-makers.‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ driveRead moreAccording to the Washington Post, the clips will show that Stone “predicted violent clashes with leftwing activists and forecast months before the 2020 vote that [Donald Trump] would use armed guards and loyal judges to stay in power”.CNN said footage also showed Stone the day before election day saying: “Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”So who is Roger Stone?A Republican strategist, consultant and author, he is most often described as a self-confessed political dirty trickster and longtime Trump adviser, given to flamboyance in tailoring and swinging as well as campaign stunts.Now 70, Stone started out as a student volunteer on Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972, “pulling … penny-ante tricks” against Democrats or, in the Nixonian vernacular, “ratfucking” the president’s opponents.Before Nixon’s downfall in 1974, amid the Watergate scandal, Stone worked for the Committee to Re-elect the President, or Creep.After Nixon, Stone – who has a tattoo of the 37th president on his back – worked with Paul Manafort and Charles Black to build a Washington lobbying firm that flourished in the 1980s, often representing clients other firms might have found unsavoury.Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire, was one. Donald Trump was another.Stone advised Trump during his flirtation with a presidential run in 2000. In the presidential election the same year, Stone played a prominent role in stopping a recount in Florida, thereby securing the White House for George W Bush. In the mid-2000s, Stone was involved in the downfall of Eliot Spitzer, a Democratic New York governor who used prostitutes.Stone was back at Trump’s side in 2015, when he finally ran for president. Stone was fired or resigned but remained in Trump’s orbit, an erratic asteroid endangering anyone in his path, during the billionaire’s campaign and time in power.In 2019, Stone was indicted by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, in relation to his links to Trump’s campaign and to WikiLeaks, which released Democratic emails obtained by Russian hackers.In February 2020, prosecutors recommended Stone be sentenced to between seven and nine years in prison. After Trump complained by tweet, the Department of Justice intervened, saying the recommendation was too harsh. Four prosecutors resigned in protest.Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison but never went to jail. In December 2020, in the midst of Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, Trump granted Stone clemency.In Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, Stone denies working with far-right groups including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys around the Capitol attack. But last week, such links came up at the start of the trial of the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes, on seditious conspiracy charges.Trump ally Roger Stone: Americans can now choose ‘alternative’ truthsRead moreRandall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University, told the Washington Post: “It seems like the prosecution is treating Stone as an un-indicted co-conspirator.”Stone’s decision to allow documentary film-makers to follow him in his efforts to “Stop the Steal” was characteristic – and landed him in characteristic trouble, in the sights of the January 6 committee and the justice department. Summoned to appear before January 6 investigators, Stone repeatedly invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.Stone has recently teamed up with Michael Flynn, a retired general, ex-national security adviser and leading pro-Trump plotter.In July, Sean Morales-Doyle, a Brennan Center expert on voting rights and elections, told the Guardian Stone and Flynn’s attempts to train Republican canvassers and poll watchers were “a sham, aimed … at undermining public faith in our elections and setting the stage for future attempts to subvert the will of the people”.TopicsRoger StoneUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansprofilesReuse this content More