Roger Stone facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Roger Stone
Stone in 2019
Born	Roger Joseph Stone Jr. (1952-08-27) August 27, 1952 (age 71) Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	George Washington University (no degree)
Political party	Republican (before 2012, 2015–present) Libertarian (2012–2015)
Spouse(s)	Anne Wesche ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1990)​ Nydia Bertran ​ (m. 1992)​
Children	1
Criminal information Roger Stone

Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist. Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. In addition to frequently serving as a campaign adviser, Stone was a political lobbyist. In 1980, he co-founded a Washington, D.C.–based lobbying firm with Paul Manafort and Charles R. Black Jr. The firm recruited Peter G. Kelly and was renamed Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly in 1984. During the 1980s, BMSK became a top lobbying firm by leveraging its White House connections to attract high-paying clients, including U.S. corporations and trade associations, as well as foreign governments. By 1990, it was one of the leading lobbyists for American companies and foreign organizations.

Stone has been a longtime friend of Donald Trump. Over the course of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, Stone promoted a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories. He has described his political modus operandi as "Attack, attack, attack – never defend" and "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack." Stone first suggested Trump run for president in early 1998 while he was Trump's casino business lobbyist in Washington. The Netflix documentary film Get Me Roger Stone focuses on Stone's past and role in Trump's presidential campaign.

Stone officially left the Trump campaign on August 8, 2015. However, two associates of Stone have said he collaborated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign to discredit Hillary Clinton. Stone and Assange have denied these claims. Nearly three dozen search warrants were unsealed in April 2020 which revealed contacts between Stone and Assange, and that Stone orchestrated hundreds of fake Facebook accounts and bloggers to run a political influence scheme on social media.

On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of 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 scheduled to report to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. On August 17, 2020, he dropped the appeal of his convictions. Trump pardoned Stone on December 23, 2020.

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.

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".

1980s: Reagan 1980, lobbying, Bush 1988

Stone with President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1982

Roger Stone and his wife Ann Stone with President and First Lady Reagan in 1984

Stone greeting President Reagan in 1985

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 distancing 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. BMS 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.

In 1987 and 1988, Stone served as senior adviser to Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, which was managed by consulting partner Charlie Black. In that same election, his other partners worked for George H. W. Bush (Lee Atwater as campaign manager, and Paul Manafort as director of operations in the fall campaign).

In April 1992, Time alleged that Stone was involved with the controversial Willie Horton advertisements to aid George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, which were targeted against Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. Stone has said that he urged Lee Atwater not to include Horton in the ad. Stone denied making or distributing the advertisement, and said it was Atwater's doing.

In the 1990s, Stone and Manafort sold their business. Although their careers went in different directions, their relationship remained close. Stone married his first wife Anne Elizabeth Wesche in 1974. Using the name Ann E.W. Stone, she founded the group Republicans for Choice in 1989. They divorced in 1990.

1990s: Early work with Donald Trump, Dole 1996

In 1995, Stone was the president of Republican Senator Arlen Specter's campaign for the 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries. Specter withdrew early in the campaign season with less than 2% support.

Stone was for many years a lobbyist for Donald Trump on behalf of his casino business and also was involved in opposing expanded casino gambling in New York State, a position that brought him into conflict with Governor George Pataki.

Stone resigned from a post as a consultant to the 1996 presidential campaign for Senator Bob Dole.

2000s: Florida recount, Killian memos, conflict with Eliot Spitzer

In the 2000 presidential election, Stone served as the campaign manager for Donald Trump's aborted campaign for President in the 2000 Reform Party presidential primaries. Investigative journalist Wayne Barrett accused Stone of persuading Trump to publicly consider a run for the Reform nomination to sideline Pat Buchanan and sabotage the Reform Party in an attempt to lower their vote total to benefit George W. Bush's campaign.

Later that year, according to Stone and the film Recount, Stone was recruited by James Baker to assist with public relations during the Florida recount. According to reporter Greg Palast, Stone was a key figure in organizing the so-called Brooks Brothers riot, the demonstration by Republican operatives against the recount.

In the 2002 New York gubernatorial election, Stone was associated with the campaign of businessman Thomas Golisano for governor of New York State.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Stone was an advisor (apparently unpaid) to Al Sharpton, a candidate in the Democratic primaries. Defending Stone's involvement, Sharpton said, "I've been talking to Roger Stone for a long time. That doesn't mean that he's calling the shots for me. Don't forget that Bill Clinton was doing more than talking to Dick Morris." Critics suggested that Stone was only working with Sharpton as a way to undermine the Democratic Party's chances of winning the election. Sharpton denies that Stone had any influence over his campaign.

In that election a blogger accused Stone of responsibility for the Kerry–Specter campaign materials which were circulated in Pennsylvania. Such signs were considered controversial because they were seen as an effort to get Democrats who supported Kerry to vote for then Republican Senator Arlen Specter in heavily Democratic Philadelphia.

During the 2004 general election, Stone was accused by then-DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe of forging the Killian memos that led CBS News to report that President Bush had not fulfilled his service obligations while enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard. McAuliffe cited a report in the New York Post in his accusations. For his part, Stone denied having forged the documents.

In 2007, Stone, a top adviser at the time to Joseph Bruno (the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate), was forced to resign by Bruno after allegations that Stone had threatened Bernard Spitzer, the then-83-year-old father of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer. On August 6, 2007, an expletive-laced message was left on the elder Spitzer's answering machine threatening to prosecute the elderly man if he did not implicate his son in wrongdoing. Bernard Spitzer hired a private detective agency that traced the call to the phone of Roger Stone's wife. Roger Stone denied leaving the message, despite the fact that his voice was recognized, claiming he was at a movie that was later shown not to have been screened that night. Stone was accused on an episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews on August 22, 2007, of being the voice on an expletive-laden voicemail threatening Bernard Spitzer, father of Eliot, with subpoenas. Donald Trump is quoted as saying of the incident, "They caught Roger red-handed, lying. What he did was ridiculous and stupid."

Stone consistently denied the reports. Thereafter, however, he resigned from his position as a consultant to the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee at Bruno's request.

Stone is featured in Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, documentary on Lee Atwater made in 2008. He also was featured in Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, the 2010 documentary.

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg considers Stone his mentor during this time, and "surrogate father".

2010–2014: Libertarian Party involvement and other political activity

In February 2010, Stone became campaign manager for Kristin Davis in her bid for the Libertarian Party nomination for governor of New York in the 2010 election. Stone said that the campaign "is not a hoax, a prank or a publicity stunt. I want to get her a half-million votes." However, he later was spotted at a campaign rally for Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, of whom Stone has spoken favorably. Stone admittedly had been providing support and advice to both campaigns on the grounds that the two campaigns had different goals: Davis was seeking to gain permanent ballot access for her party, and Paladino was in the race to win (and was Stone's preferred candidate). As such, Stone did not believe he had a conflict of interest in supporting both candidates.

Stone volunteered as an unpaid adviser to comedian Steve Berke ("a libertarian member of his so-called After Party") in his 2011 campaign for mayor of Miami Beach, Florida in 2012. Berke lost the race to incumbent Mayor Matti Herrera Bower.

In February 2012, Stone said that he had changed his party affiliation from the Republican Party to the Libertarian Party. Stone predicted a "Libertarian moment" in 2016 and the end of the Republican party.

In June 2012, Stone said that he was running a super PAC in support of former New Mexico governor and Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, whom he had met at a Reason magazine Christmas party two years earlier. Stone told The Huffington Post that Johnson had a real role to play, although "I have no allusions [sic] of him winning."

Stone with a fan in 2014

Stone considered running as a Libertarian candidate for governor of Florida in 2014, but in May 2013, he said in a statement that he would not run, and that he wanted to devote himself to campaigning in support of the 2014 Florida Amendment 2 referendum.

2015–2021: Donald Trump campaign and media commentary

Stone served as an adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Stone left the campaign on August 8, 2015, amid controversy, with Stone claiming he quit and Trump claiming that Stone was fired. Despite this, Stone still supported Trump. A few days later, Stone wrote an op-ed called "The man who just resigned from Donald Trump's campaign explains how Trump can still win" for Business Insider.

Despite calling Stone a "stone-cold loser" in a 2008 interview and accusing him of seeking too much publicity in a statement shortly after Stone left the campaign, Donald Trump praised him during an appearance in December 2015 on Alex Jones' radio show that was orchestrated by Stone. "Roger's a good guy," Trump said. "He's been so loyal and so wonderful." Stone remained an informal adviser to and media surrogate for Trump throughout the campaign.

Stone had considered entering the 2016 United States Senate election in Florida to challenge white nationalist Augustus Invictus for the Libertarian nomination. He ultimately did not enter the race.

During the course of the 2016 campaign, Stone was banned from appearing on CNN and MSNBC after making a series of offensive Twitter posts disparaging television personalities. Erik Wemple, media writer for The Washington Post, described Stone's tweets as "nasty" and "bigoted". In February 2016, CNN said that it would no longer invite Stone to appear on its network, and MSNBC followed suit, confirming in April 2016, that Stone had also been banned from that network.

In April 2016, Stone formed a pro-Trump activist group, Stop the Steal, and threatened "Days of Rage" if Republican party leaders tried to deny the nomination to Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The Washington Post reported that Stone "is organizing [Trump] supporters as a force of intimidation", noting that Stone "has ... threatened to publicly disclose the hotel room numbers of delegates who work against Trump". Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said that Stone's threat to publicize the hotel room numbers of delegates was "just totally over the line".

After Trump had been criticized at the Democratic National Convention for his comments on Muslims by Khizr Khan, a Pakistani American whose son received a posthumous Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004, Stone made headlines defending Trump's criticism by accusing Khan of sympathizing with the enemy.

In 2017, Stone was the subject of a Netflix documentary film, titled Get Me Roger Stone, which focuses on his past and on his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Stone first suggested Trump run for President in early 1998 while Stone was Trump's casino business lobbyist in Washington.

Stone called Saudi Arabia "an enemy" and criticized Trump's visit to Riyadh in May 2017. He suggested that the Saudi government or members of the Saudi royal family directly supported or financed the September 11 attacks, tweeting that "Instead of meeting with the Saudis @realDonaldTrump should be demanding they pay for the attack on America on 9/11 which they financed."

During the campaign, Stone frequently promoted conspiracy theories, including the false claim that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. In December 2018, as part of a defamation settlement, Stone agreed to retract a false claim he had made during the campaign: that Guo Wengui had donated to Hillary Clinton.

On September 10, 2020, Stone told InfoWars' Alex Jones that, if Trump appeared to lose the 2020 United States presidential election, he should consider declaring martial law via the Insurrection Act and confiscate ballots, particularly in Nevada, where they were "completely corrupted" and so "should be seized by federal marshals." Further, Stone advised that the president invoke federal law to arrest the leading businessmen Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg as well as the politicians Bill and Hillary Clinton for "illegal activity" and shut down the opinion website The Daily Beast, arresting its staff for "seditious" activities; "this is war," announced Stone.

As numerous false and unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud spread after the 2020 presidential election, Stone asserted he had "learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine." Matthew Dunlap, the Maine secretary of state, said the "vague rumor has absolutely no validity." In an 2020 interview with Tucker Carlson Tonight Stone also called Trump "the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln."

Stone has repeatedly indicated he would back Trump if he decided to run for a second non-consecutive term in the 2024 United States presidential election, and criticized Ron DeSantis for "disloyalty" amid rumors that he would run his presidential campaign.

Stone supported Russia during its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, claiming that Vladimir Putin was "acting defensively" in order to halt a purported U.S.-funded biological weapons program, which, in fact, did not exist.

2022: Ontario, Canada political organizing

On April 25, 2022, the Ontario Party announced that Stone had joined their campaign team as a Senior Strategic Advisor for the 2022 Ontario general election. According to the media release issued by the Ontario Party, Stone had previously joined party leader Derek Sloan to address the party's candidate convention and criticized Ontario Premier Doug Ford's approach to conservatism.

Personal style and habits

Stone's personal style has been described as flamboyant. In a 2007 Weekly Standard profile written by Matt Labash, Stone was described as a "lord of mischief" and the "boastful black prince of Republican sleaze". Labash wrote that Stone "often sets his pronouncements off with the utterance 'Stone's Rules,' signifying to listeners that one of his shot-glass commandments is coming down, a pithy dictate uttered with the unbending certitude one usually associates with the Book of Deuteronomy." Examples of Stone's Rules include "Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art, sometimes for its own sake."

Stone does not wear socks – a fact that Nancy Reagan brought to her husband's attention during his 1980 presidential campaign. Labash described him as "a dandy by disposition who boasts of having not bought off-the-rack since he was 17", who has "taught reporters how to achieve perfect double-dimples underneath their tie knots". Washington journalist Victor Gold has noted Stone's reputation as one of the "smartest dressers" in Washington. Stone's longtime tailor is Alan Flusser. Stone dislikes single-vent jackets (describing them as the sign of a "heathen"), saying he owns 100 silver-colored neckties and has 100 suits in storage. Fashion stories have been written about him in GQ. Stone has written of his dislike for jeans and ascots and has praised seersucker three-piece suits, as well as Madras jackets in the summertime and velvet blazers in the winter.

In 1999, Stone credited his facial appearance to "decades of following a regimen of Chinese herbs, breathing therapies, tai chi and acupuncture." Stone wears a diamond pinky ring in the shape of a horseshoe and in 2007 he had Richard Nixon's face tattooed on his back. He has said: "I like English tailoring, I like Italian shoes. I like French wine. I like vodka martinis with an olive, please. I like to keep physically fit." Stone's office in Florida has been described as a "Hall of Nixonia" with framed pictures, posters, bongs, and letters associated with Nixon.

Books and other writings

Since 2010, Stone has been an occasional contributor to the conservative website The Daily Caller, serving as a "male fashion editor". Stone also writes for his own fashion blog, Stone on Style.

Stone has written five books, all published by Skyhorse Publishing of New York City. His books have been described as "hatchet jobs" by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times.

• The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ (with Mike Colapietro contributing) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013): Stone contends that Lyndon B. Johnson was behind a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. In a review for The Washington Times, Hugh Aynesworth wrote: "The title pretty much explains the book's theory. If a reader doesn't let facts get in the way, it could be an interesting adventure."
• Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014): Stone discusses Richard Nixon and his career. About two-thirds of the book "is a conventional biography that is by no means a whitewash of Nixon. Stone writes that the President took campaign money from the mob, had a long-running affair with a Hong Kong woman who may have been a Chinese spy." The remaining one-third of the book is an unconventional account of the Watergate scandal. This account is rejected by experts, such as Watergate researchers Anthony Summers and Max Holland. Holland said of Stone: "He's out of his ever-lovin' mind." Dean said in 2014 that Stone's book and his defense of Nixon are "typical of the alternative universe out there".
• The Clintons' War on Women (with Robert Morrow of Austin, Texas) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2015): This book, according to Politico, is a "sensational" work that contains "explosive, but highly dubious, revelations about both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton", with a focus on Bill Clinton misconduct allegations, and a claim that Webster Hubbell is the biological father of Chelsea Clinton. This book was promoted by Trump, who posted a Twitter message containing the book's Amazon.com page. David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, writes that the book is "apparently designed to smear the Clintons and said that the book was part of a wider "extreme anti-Clinton project" by Stone.
• Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family (with Saint John Hunt) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016): The book focuses on Jeb Bush and the Bush family.
• The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017)
• Stone's Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018)
• The Myth of Russian Collusion: The Inside Story of How Donald Trump REALLY Won (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019) (paperback edition of Stone's 2016 book The Making of the President 2016 with an added "Introduction 2019")

See also

In Spanish: Roger Stone para niños

• Links between Trump associates and Russian officials
• List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump
• Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections