Roger Jason Stone Jr. (born 27 August 1952) was an American Republican political consultant and lobbyist who worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump. During the 2016 presidential election, he colluded with Russia and WikiLeaks to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and, on 15 November 2019, he was convicted on seven counts of witness protection, obstruction of a criminal proceeding, and making false statements.
Biography[]
Roger Jason Stone Jr. was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on 27 August 1952, and he grew up in a working-class Catholic family. In 1960, while in elementary school, he was a staunch supporter of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, convincing other children to support him by lying that Richard Nixon wanted school on saturdays. While in high school in Westchester County, New York, he again practiced his manipulative schools by ousting the president of his class as vice president and taking over his seat. By 1964, having read The Conscience of a Conservative, he became a Republican and supported Barry Goldwater during his presidential campaign. In 1972, Jeb Magruder hired Stone to work for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), and he contributed money to a rival candidate in the name of a socialist organization in an attempt to discredit them. He also hired a spy in Hubert Humphrey's Democratic campaign. After Nixon resigned, Bob Dole fired Stone for being a "dirty trickster", and, in 1975, Stone founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Stone then worked on Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns, meeting and befriending Paul Manafort in the process. Stone served as an advisor for Thomas Kean's 1981 and 1985 gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey, and Stone and Manafort went on to become business partners as political lobbyists. While they sold their business in the 1990s, they remained close. Stone became a lobbyist for Donald Trump's casino business, and he served as campaign manager for Trump's 2000 Reform Party USA presidential bid. In 2012, he joined the Libertarian Party and briefly served them as a campaign advisor, and he predicted that libertarianism would destroy the Republican Party in 2016. However, he served as an advisor on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and he was banned on appearing on CNN and MSNBC for calling a CNN commentator an "entitled diva bitch" and another one a "stupid n****" and "fat n****". He also accused the Muslim Gold Star father Khizr Khan of "sympathizing with the enemy" and Huma Abedin of being a Muslim Brotherhood ally in highly Islamophobic remarks. During the campaign, he secretly colluded with Russia and WikiLeaks to sabotage Hillary Clinton's Democratic presidential bid, and, on 25 January 2019, he was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida during Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. On 15 November 2019, he was convicted on seven charges of witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and making false statements.