Roger Stone

Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American right-wing political activist, consultant and lobbyist. He is a prominent consultant and lobbyist within the New Right, and Donald Trump's longest-serving political adviser. He was the subject of widespread media coverage for the Mueller special counsel investigation and his alleged involvement with and connections to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a consultant for the Trump campaign.

Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on Republican campaigns, including those of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Trump. He co-founded a lobbying firm with Paul Manafort and Charles R. Black Jr. The firm became Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK) in 1984. BMSK became a top lobbying firm, leveraging White House connections for high-paying clients, including U.S. corporations, trade associations, and foreign governments. Stone's style has been described as "a renowned infighter", "a seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics", "a Republican strategist", and "a political fixer". Stone has called himself "an agent provocateur". He has described his political modus operandi as "attack, attack, attack—never defend" and "admit nothing, deny everything, and launch a counterattack", all evocative of associate Roy Cohn.

Stone first suggested Trump run for president in 1998 while lobbying for his casino business. He left the Trump campaign on August 8, 2015. In 2018, two associates alleged Stone claimed contact with Julian Assange during the 2016 campaign. Assange denied meeting Stone, and Stone said any mention was a joke. Court documents in 2020 showed Stone and Assange exchanged messages in June 2017. Unsealed warrants in April 2020 revealed Stone's 2017 contacts with Assange and that Stone orchestrated hundreds of fake Facebook accounts and bloggers for a political influence scheme.

On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's investigation and charged with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and making false statements. In November 2019, a jury convicted him on all seven felony counts. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison. On July 10, 2020, days before Stone was to report to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. On August 17, 2020, Stone dropped his appeal. Trump pardoned Stone on December 23, 2020.

Since 2023, Stone has hosted a show on WABC radio eponymously called "The Roger Stone Show".

Early life and political work

Stone was born on August 27, 1952, in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Gloria Rose (Corbo) and Roger J. Stone. He grew up in the community of Vista, part of the town of Lewisboro, New York, on the Connecticut border. His mother was the president of Meadow Pond Elementary School PTA, a Cub Scout den mother, and occasionally a small-town reporter; his father "Chubby" (also Roger J. Stone) was a well driller and sometime chief of the Vista volunteer Fire Department. He has described his family as middle-class, blue-collar Catholics. His ancestry includes Hungarian and Italian.

Stone said that as an elementary school student during the 1960 presidential election, he broke into politics to further John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign: "I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays ... It was my first political trick."

When he was a junior and vice president of student government at John Jay High School in northern Westchester County, New York, he manipulated the ouster of the student government president and succeeded him. Stone recalled how he ran for election as president for his senior year: "I built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket. Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school to run against me. You think that's mean? No, it's smart."

Given a copy of Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, Stone became drawn to conservatism as a child and a volunteer in Goldwater's 1964 campaign. In 2007, Stone indicated he was a staunch conservative but with libertarian leanings.

As a student at George Washington University in 1972, Stone invited Jeb Stuart Magruder to speak at a Young Republicans Club meeting, then asked Magruder for a job with Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President. Magruder agreed and Stone then left college to work for the committee. Stone left the university after one year.

Career

1970s: Nixon campaign, Watergate and Reagan 1976

Stone's political career began in earnest on the 1972 Nixon campaign, with activities such as contributing money to a possible rival of Nixon in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance and then slipping the receipt to the Manchester Union-Leader. Eventually Magruder and Herbert Porter hired Stone to spy on rival presidential campaigns during the 1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Stone subsequently hired Michael McMinoway to infiltrate campaigns of candidates such as Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. He also hired a spy in the Humphrey campaign who became Humphrey's driver. According to Stone, during the day he was officially a scheduler in the Nixon campaign, but "By night, I'm trafficking in the black arts. Nixon's people were obsessed with intelligence." Stone maintains he never did anything illegal during the Watergate scandal. The Richard Nixon Foundation later clarified that Stone had been a 20-year-old junior scheduler on the campaign, and that to characterize Stone as one of Nixon's aides or advisers was a "gross misstatement".

After Nixon won the 1972 presidential election, Stone worked for the administration in the Office of Economic Opportunity. After Nixon resigned, Stone went to work for Bob Dole, but was later fired after columnist Jack Anderson publicly identified Stone as a Nixon "dirty trickster".

In 1975, Stone helped found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, a New Right organization that helped to pioneer independent expenditure political advertising.

In the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries, he worked in Ronald Reagan's campaign for U.S. President. In 1977, at age 24, Stone won the presidency of the Young Republicans in a campaign managed by his friend Paul Manafort; they had compiled a dossier on each of the 800 delegates that gathered, which they called "whip books".

Stone met Donald Trump in 1979, introduced by Trump attorney and mentor Roy Cohn. Stone was the New York regional political director seeking to raise money for the 1980 Reagan campaign, of which Trump joined the finance committee. Stone said Trump directed him to visit his father, Fred Trump, who gave him $200,000 for the Reagan campaign. Stone recalled in 2017 that he and Donald Trump "hit it off immediately."

1980s: Reagan 1980, lobbying, Bush 1988

Stone went on to serve as chief strategist for Thomas Kean's campaign for Governor of New Jersey in 1981 and for his reelection campaign in 1985.

Stone, the "keeper of the Nixon flame", was an adviser to the former President in his post-presidential years, serving as "Nixon's man in Washington". Stone was a protégé of former Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge, who introduced the young Stone to former Vice President Nixon in 1967. After Stone was indicted in 2019, the Nixon Foundation released a statement diminishing Stone's ties to Nixon. John Sears recruited Stone to work in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, coordinating the Northeast. Stone said that Roy Cohn helped him arrange for independent candidate John B. Anderson to get the nomination of the Liberal Party of New York, a move that would help split the opposition to Reagan in the state. Stone said Cohn gave him a suitcase that Stone avoided opening and that, as instructed by Cohn, he dropped off at the office of a lawyer influential in Liberal Party circles. Reagan carried the state with 46% of the vote. Speaking after the statute of limitations for bribery had expired, Stone later said, "I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don't know what he did for the money, but whatever it was, the Liberal party reached its right conclusion out of a matter of principle."

In 1980, after their key roles in the Reagan campaign, Stone and Manafort decided to go into business together, with partner Charlie Black, creating a political consulting and lobbying firm to cash in on their relationships within the new administration. Black, Manafort & Stone (BMS) became one of Washington D.C.'s first mega-lobbying firms and was described as instrumental to the success of Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign. Republican political strategist Lee Atwater joined the firm in 1985, after serving in the #2 position on Reagan-Bush 1984.

Because of BMS's willingness to represent brutal third-world dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, the firm was branded "The Torturers' Lobby". BMS also represented a host of high-powered corporate clients, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the Tobacco Institute and, starting in the early 1980s, Donald Trump.