Tag: Roger Stone

Feds investigating whether Roger Stone ‘radicalized’ Trump supporters who stormed Capitol: Report

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Roger Stone is reportedly under investigation for his role in planning the Jan. 6 insurrection to undo Donald Trump’s election loss.

Federal prosecutors are building a conspiracy case against right-wing militants who allegedly plotted the insurrection, and investigators are looking into the roles Stone and Alex Jones may have played in radicalizing Trump supporters who joined the assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to Los Angeles Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman.

“I think they are leaving no stone unturned to kind of portray and determine the color of what happened here, were the insurrectionists influenced by staff, members of Congress, Trump loyalists like Roger Stone and Alex Jones,” Litman told MSNBC’s Zerlina Maxwell. “They’re really wanting to paint a full picture rather than — we see the biggest charges against some of the people, they are criminal conspiracy and insurrection, they pack plenty of wallop already, and that is the overall code they are going after but the picture deservedly is one of terrorism. These were domestic terrorists.” Continue reading.

Oath Keepers founder, associates exchanged 19 calls from start of Jan. 6 riot through breach, prosecutors allege

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Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, his deputy and three members who guarded Roger Stone exchanged nearly 20 phone calls over three hours on Jan. 6, coinciding with the first assault on police barricades protecting the U.S. Capitol and spanning the time the three members breached the building, prosecutors charged Thursday.

In a new indictment adding previously charged Stone guards Joshua James, 33, of Arab, Ala., and Roberto Minuta, 36, of Prosper, Tex., to an Oath Keepers conspiracy case that now has 12 defendants, prosecutors bluntly laid a path to Rhodes and a person they said he put in charge of his group’s operations that day.

Prosecutors identified that individual only as “Person 10.” Rhodes in interviews has said he tapped a former Army explosives expert and Blackwater contractor nicknamed “Whip” as on-the-ground team leader. Continue reading.

F.B.I. Finds Contact Between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot

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A leader of the far-right group separately said he had been in touch with Roger Stone, but an official said it was not the same contact investigators found through electronic communications records.

WASHINGTON — A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party.

The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the F.B.I. intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack. Continue reading.

First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack.

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At least six people who had provided security for Roger Stone entered the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, according to a New York Times investigation.

Videos show the group guarding Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of former President Donald J. Trump, on the day of the attack or the day before. All six of them are associated with the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia that is known to provide security for right-wing personalities and protesters at public events.

Mr. Stone, a convicted felon who was pardoned by Mr. Trump, has a long history as a self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” political operative who has lived by the edicts of attack, admit nothing, deny everything, and counterattack. He posted a message online denying involvement in “the lawless acts at the Capitol.” Continue reading.

Video surfaces showing Trump ally Roger Stone flanked by Oath Keepers on morning of Jan. 6

Some Oath Keepers were later involved in the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

A new video has surfaced showing former President Donald Trump’slongtime adviser Roger Stone in Washington, D.C., on the morning of Jan. 6, flanked by members of the Oath Keepers militia group just hours before the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building.

In the video, which was obtained and reviewed by ABC News, Stone takes pictures and mingles with supporters outside a D.C. hotel as Oath Keepers hover around him, one wearing a baseball hat and military-style vest branded with the militia group’s logo.

“So, hopefully we have this today, right?” one supporter asks Stone in the video, which was posted just after 10 a.m. on the morning of the rally. “We shall see,” Stone replies.https://abcnews.go.com/US/video-surfaces-showing-trump-ally-roger-stone-flanked/story?id=75706765

One of Trump’s new lawyers declined to charge Bill Cosby. The other maintains Jeffrey Epstein was murdered.

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When Bruce L. Castor Jr. ran for district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., in 2015, the campaign hinged on his decision years earlier not to charge comedian Bill Cosby with sexual assault. And after Castor lost the race, he sued the woman he blamed for the defeat: one of Cosby’s victims.

His suit, which was dismissed in 2018, made national headlines as the prosecutor who defeated him criminally charged Cosby, eventually sending him to prison.

Now, Castor is poised to represent another politician dismayed over a recent election loss: former president Donald Trump. Continue reading.

Donald Trump Wants Judges to Throw the Election to Him. Buckle Up.

Trump is supercharging a vote-suppression strategy pioneered by Roger Stone decades ago. His legal stunts won’t work if Joe Biden resoundingly defeats him. But if the election is close, expect litigation until the bitter end.

Long before Roger Stone was convicted, sentenced, and spared from prison for his many lies to Congress on behalf of Donald Trump, he built a name helping Republicans suppress the votes of their opponents by claiming, without evidence, that they were cheaters. In 1981, Stone led an effort in New Jersey to have armed vigilantesmonitor polling locations in Black and Latino communities, all in the name of so-called ballot security and voter-fraud prevention. What was prevented instead was actual voting: The operation was so egregious, the Republican National Committee ended up getting sued in federal court and slapped with a consent decree that, for nearly 40 years, prohibited similar dirty tricks to intimidate voters.

The old is new again. No longer bound by judicial orders after a judge lifted the consent decree in 2018, Republicans are now free to resume poll-watching and much more, this time led by a ringmaster with a megaphone far louder than Stone’s: a president who’s loudly claiming that the election will be rigged against him, and that the only way to unrig it is if he wins—or refuses to lose—no matter the cost to the nation. One advocate with Fair Fight, the voting-rights group formed by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, has called this the “burn-it-down strategy.”

In Trump’s mind, burning it all down means many things. It means delegitimizing mail-in voting, which many states have expanded out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic. It means making baseless claims of widespread fraud, which undermines confidence in the process and may lead to people staying home. And it means signaling to goon squads that support Trump to watch the polls “very carefully” on November 3, as Trump suggested during his first debate with Joe Biden. Independent of the election results, the president has also raised doubts about the peaceful transfer of power and telegraphed that he’d declare himself the winner prematurely, which election officials are warning against but Trump allies are encouraging. Continue reading.

Promoting Fake Conspiracies, Roger Stone Warns He Will ‘Monitor’ 2020 Voting

Trump confidant Roger Stone is pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 election and suggesting he might launch an effort to “carefully monitor” voting on Election Day. 

Stone floated the plan in a September 14 article published on his website where he responded to widespread attention given to his claim that a Donald Trump victory would be the only legitimate outcome to the 2020 election and that if Trump loses, he should consider imposing martial law or using other draconian measures in order to stay in power. 

Trump recently commuted a 40-month prison sentence that was handed down to Stone after he was convicted of lying to Congress and tampering with witnesses as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into 2016 election interference. Namely, Stone lied to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails with the aim of boosting Trump’s prospects. In the weeks leading up to the commutation, Stone made a number of media appearances where he asked Trump to grant him clemency and said that in exchange, he could be a more effective campaigner for the president’s 2020 reelection efforts. Continue reading.

Watchdog Reportedly Probing Justice Officials’ Interference In Roger Stone Sentencing

Prosecutors quit when Attorney General Barr forced a lighter sentence for Trump confidant Roger Stone, who dodged prison entirely after Trump commuted it.

The Inspector General’s Office of the Justice Department has launched an investigation into officials’ interference in the sentencing of long-time Donald Trump confidant and convicted felon Roger Stone, sources have told NBC News.

The probe is reportedly examining the details of what happened in February when prosecutors said DOJ bosses applied “heavy pressure” to ensure a far lighter sentence for Stone than what was initially planned.

Attorney General William Barr ultimately intervened to override prosecutors’ recommendation of seven to nine years for Stone to ask for a lighter sentence. All four prosecutors then quit the case in dissent. Continue reading.

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

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President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated. Continue reading.