--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I'm Andrew Prokop, and today we're talking about Roger Stone, who's been making headlines after being arrested and charged with lying to Congress and witness tampering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew, you cover the Mueller investigation for Vox. The president temporarily reopened the government without wall funding today, the same day his good friend and former campaign advisor had a very bad day. What happened to Roger Stone this morning?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So early in the morning, FBI agents showed up at the home of longtime Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And they arrested him. And soon Mueller's office publicly released an indictment of Stone for allegedly lying to Congress and attempting to obstruct the congressional investigations of what happened in 2016 between the Trump campaign and Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what's he being charged with?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was charged with one count of attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, which refers to the House Intelligence Committee's investigation. Then five counts of making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee and one count of witness tampering, basically trying to threaten and intimidate a witness to give an allegedly false story that would help Stone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so we have these seven charges. Obstruction of an official proceeding making false statements and witness tampering. What is the obstruction of official proceeding making false statements portion of it?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So back in 2016, Roger Stone repeatedly claimed to have some information about what WikiLeaks or Julian Assange were going to do. We know they eventually released emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta. Emails that they got from Russia. Exactly. Allegedly hacked by Russian intelligence officials.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Stone had said publicly and privately made a lot of claims to know what Assange was going to do. All of the Clinton Foundation scandals has been, not we didn't do it, has been you have no proof. Well, I think Julian Assange has that proof, and I think he's going to furnish it to the American people.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: After Trump won, there were a lot of questions about this, because, of course, the hacking of the emails was a crime. So if Stone was involved in this in some way, it could have been a crime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Stone put out this story, and this is the story he gave to the House Intelligence Committee, which was investigating the matter. He said that all the information he had about what WikiLeaks or Julian Assange would be doing just came from this one guy who was talking to him, Randy Credico, who is a radio host in New York.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: This is Randy Credico live on the fly. He said, I was only repeating what Credico told me. I didn't really have any specific inside info. And also, I have no other documents or evidence to provide to the committee about this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mueller is now saying that this was false that this was a false story and attempt to cover up what really happened that it's very clear at the very least from documentary evidence that Stone was in touch with other people than just Randy Credico about Julian Assange's plans or communicating with WikiLeaks the full extent of what happened there and those contacts are still not clear.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Mueller has not attempted to definitively answer the question of what happened between Stone and WikiLeaks in 2016. What he has said is that the story Stone has been telling about this to the House Intelligence Committee was a lie. So at the very least, Robert Mueller is saying that Stone allegedly lied to Congress. Yes, which is a crime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what about the witness tampering?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this radio host, Randy Credico, was asked to testify to the House Intelligence Committee as well. And in November 2017, Credico reached out to Stone and said that he was hearing questions about this. Stone responded, Stonewall, plead the fifth, anything to save the plan. Richard Nixon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What? And then in December 2017, Stone told Credico that he should do a Frank Pentangeli before the House Intelligence Committee.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I never know Godfather. And this refers to The Godfather Part II, where Frank Pentangeli is asked to testify about the mafia before a congressional committee and claims that he does not know important information.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here and now under oath, were you at any time a member of a crime organization headed by Michael Corleone? I don't know nothing about that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So those were sort of efforts to get Credico not to testify. And then once it became clear that Credico was not going to stick by Stone's false story, Stone got angry. You are a rat, he emailed Credico in April 2018. You are a rat, a stoolie. You backstab your friends. Run your mouth. My lawyers are dying. Rip you to shreds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is he so bad at typing?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Stone makes a lot of typos.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Stone also threatened to take that dog away from you. Credico has this cute little therapy dog that he likes to bring around.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Stone also emailed Credico, I am so ready. Let get it on. Prepare to die. Expletive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now a lot of this actually came out earlier this year and was reported in the press. And Stone response at the time was that he was not threatening the dog. He was worried that Credico was mistreating the dog and was looking out for the dog by saying that he wanted to take it away.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Oh, and also he said that when he said prepare to die to Credico, he was referring to how Credico had recently told him that he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. And so it was kind of a friendly prepare to die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Credico says he does not have terminal prostate cancer.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Holy shit. These are the best lies of all time. These are really top drawer lies. But it really gets to the heart of who Roger Stone is. A hilarious liar who's really bad at typing and will threaten your dog.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Roger Stone posted something like a $250,000 bond with travel restrictions and then has had a very busy day. What has he been saying about these charges?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, he called into the InfoWars radio show. What do you want to say to the president? Once again, there is no evidence of Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration, and I'm not charged with doing anything inappropriate or illegal to assist in his election, even though I think I'm being persecuted for being a 40-year friend and supporter of his.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then also gave a press conference briefly outside the courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. I will plead not guilty to these charges. I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation. I am troubled by the political motivations of the prosecutors.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has said already that these charges have nothing to do with the president. Look, John, I'm not an attorney. I haven't read through that even if I had. I'm not going to be able to provide you some type of insider legal analysis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What I can tell you is that the specific charges that have been brought against Mr. Stone don't have anything to do with the president.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: One big unanswered issue here is how often Stone and Donald Trump were in communication during the campaign and whether they may have talked about WikiLeaks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's been a lot of talk about the Mueller investigation wrapping up. Does the Stone indictment suggest that that's going to come to pass soon?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I don't know whether it tells us anything on that one way or the other, but what it does tell me is that this doesn't seem to be the last word in this story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When Stone was arrested this morning, the FBI reportedly raided his residences and in search of evidence, which suggests that Mueller may want to either, I mean, he could be just trying to strengthen this existing case or he could be preparing to make another case.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And I guess the big question is, we still don't really know what happened between Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, or their various intermediaries in 2016. Was there some kind of information sharing agreement? Was there some kind of deeper election interference effort?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I do think that Mueller probably wants to answer that question.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Coming up on Today Explained, Roger Stone has been around for a minute. Like, since Nixon and Watergate. Coincidence? Nah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here's what you need to know about the podcast. Josie and Johnny are having a baby with you. Josie and Johnny are these sort of hapless, clueless comedians who are just trying to figure out how to have their first child.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: In each episode, they sit down with actors and writers and comedians who are parents to help them figure things out. People like John Hodgman, Jane Marie, Eugene Merman, Rachel Sklar.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They cover the funnier, messier questions from like, what is no sleep actually like to, are we allowed to politically indoctrinate our kids?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But they also talk about the serious stuff like IVF, postpartum depression, and other mental health stuff that comes up for expecting parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's something for everyone, from people who never want to be parents to people who have been parents for 40 years.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Josie and Johnny are having a baby with you. You can find it in all of the places you find podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, Roger Stone. Roger Jason Stone. Roger Jason Stone Jr. Roger Jason Stone Jr. Self-proclaimed dirty trickster? Donald Trump's albino assassin, Roger Stone.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Roger. Roger. Now, you don't mind that I call you his albino assassin, do you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, comrade. I mean Bill. What you have to understand about Roger Stone is that he's more than just an advisor to Donald Trump or a guy who just got indicted by Robert Mueller.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He's kind of a legendary figure in Republican politics. And in the style of a good origin story for a supervillain, it goes all the way back to Watergate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Stone was 19 years old in 1972 and he was a huge fan of Richard Nixon, volunteering for the Nixon campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that's when he did his, he now proudly takes credit for his first dirty trick.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a Republican congressman who was challenging Nixon in the primaries. So Stone sent this challenger phony donations that he said were from the Young Socialist Alliance.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I got an enormous mason jar, filled it with pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters. I brought it to the McCluskey headquarters. I said, hi, I'm from the Young Socialist Alliance. I want to donate this and I need a receipt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They were so dumb, they gave me one.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And then he leaked it to the press. So it looked like Nixon's challenger was being funded by Young Socialists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This came to light during the congressional investigations into Watergate around 1974. And that was Stone's real first brush with national infamy.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He lost his job. He was then working for Senator Bob Dole. But it's hard to keep Roger Stone down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Stone has been completely unashamed of his involvement with Nixon. And even later in his life, got a prominent tattoo of Richard Nixon's face on his back.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And it's real. I checked. It's real and it's spectacular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You loved Richard Nixon?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think I have a balanced view of him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Over the next few years, he was kind of centrally positioned among various big picture trends in the development of American politics.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Like he co-founded one of the first well-funded outside campaign money groups that would just bombard candidates with negative ads.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was back in 1975. He backed Ronald Reagan early during his 1976 presidential campaign, which failed, and then the 1980 campaign that he actually won.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Stone was Reagan's political director for the Northeast. And his shtick at the time was trying to convince working class voters who had traditionally backed Democrats to support Reagan instead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then after Reagan won, Stone decided to cash in.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He and his friend Paul Manafort and various other connected Reagan world people started what became a kind of infamous lobbying and public relations firm, Black Manafort and Stone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The argument, I gather, seems to be that you helped elect them. Now you're helping to tell them what to do, and this really isn't what the founding fathers had in mind.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: First of all, the term influence shops is really not accurate at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think what we provide for our clients, be them foreign countries or corporations or individuals, is a superior understanding of how Washington works.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Black Manafort and Stone was kind of viewed as one of the most ethically questionable lobbying firms in D.C.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They would have no problem representing really brutal dictators or violent opposition movements alongside their mainstream corporate clients.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So it was back in 1985 that one magazine profile of Roger Stone called him the state-of-the-art Washington sleazeball.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I revel in your hatred because if I weren't effective, you wouldn't hate me.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When you're talking about him in the 80s and becoming this Washington sleazeball, you don't get a title like that without being, I guess, in some ways successful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How big a lobbyist does he become with Black, Manafort, Stone?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, so in 1985, Stone was then 32 years old and he was reportedly making $450,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that would be more than a million dollars today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He kept working with Republicans. He worked on George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, worked for Bob Dole in 1996.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And his relationship with Donald Trump goes back a really long time, goes back to the 80s. He started advising Trump and Stone actually tried to get Trump to run for president in 1988.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So – OG Trump supporter.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So he's been trying to make this happen for a long time. Through all this time, Stone was considered a very respectable pillar of the Republican Party establishment in Washington.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there was a little curveball there. Something changed in 1996.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's when he was advising Bob Dole's presidential campaign. And then the National Enquirer revealed that Roger Stone and his wife, Nikki, have advertised. The story is on the Internet and in some swinger magazines looking for kinky group sex partners.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At least he's not cheating on his wife. At the time, Stone claimed this was a setup. Someone was playing a dirty trick on him, but he had to resign from the Dole campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he eventually acknowledged that the ads really were his. And so the scandal kind of put a pall over his career for a while.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It forced him out of basically any high-level mainstream Republican role.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But Stone never really went away entirely. He would just keep popping up at odd moments in politics like in 2000 during the Florida recount battle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Stone tried to take credit for orchestrating demonstrations that helped shut down the recount, which is what the Bush campaign wanted to happen at the time.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There's also the downfall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Stone had some kind of big feud with Spitzer and Spitzer was of course eventually resigned after a prostitution scandal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Stone later claimed that he may have helped tip off investigators about Spitzer habits because he said he had heard about them
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So does it take Donald Trump to bring this sort of disgraced sex party having millionaire back into the political fold like mainstream GOP politics?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, Roger Stone and Donald Trump seemed to be a perfect match when Trump launched his presidential campaign for real this time in June 2015.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump was not very well liked by the Republican Party establishment. So it was not particularly plausible that he would land a top-level Republican operative to help advisor run his campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Stone, who had been somewhat discredited but also who Trump had had a decades-long relationship with, seemed like the perfect choice.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he did officially join the Trump campaign as an advisor. But he didn't last there long.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He clashed with other staffers, including Corey Lewandowski, and announced that he would resign from the Trump campaign in August 2015.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But then there are questions about whether he ever truly left Trump's orbit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The new indictment from Mueller alleges that Roger Stone maintained regular contact with the Trump campaign throughout the 2016 election.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There have been reports that he remained in touch with Trump personally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course he put together this operation of outside groups to back Trump and was a major supporter of Trump in the press.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What's the nature of their friendship?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, Stone did work for him and became like a kind of political advisor for him and may have advised his company on some things too.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But he was mainly Donald Trump's political guru for a long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is not the Republicans versus the Democrats. This is the elites of the Republican and Democratic Party who have driven this country into the ditch versus Donald J. Trump and the rest of America.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: We are on the verge of making America great again. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you look at photos of Roger Stone from the 80s, he kind of looks like he could be Donald Trump's cousin or something like that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They both kind of have, like, you know, the same suits, the same hair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They seem to have, like, the same taste.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think what's clear is that there is a kind of mind meld between Stone and Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not clear how much of this is Stone's influence versus just the fact that they happen to think alike.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But they seem to have the exact same theory of politics, which is to use fear, negativity, dirty tricks, mobilize your own base, demonize the other side.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like this is the Trump playbook and Stone has been using this in Republican politics for decades before Trump even got involved.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Does Roger Stone have a political ideology?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean you talk about him being around since Nixon, supporting Reagan, supporting Bush, Dole, Trump.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It seems like if you're a Republican, he'll support you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then when you talk about the lobbying he's done, it seems like he'll just sell his services to the highest bidder.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What does this guy believe in?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think Roger Stone believes in winning.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He believes in making a name for himself politically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His style of politics is very focused on manipulating the media and doing stunts to get attention and also dirty tricks, which he has proudly embraced that reputation of kind of the senior side of politics.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He told The New Yorker in 2008, politics is not about uniting people. It's about dividing people and getting your 51 percent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He told the weekly standard that for him politics is performance art.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And are we about to see the greatest Roger Stone performance yet?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. He's he's a sort of zealig like figure who just keeps showing up at so many key events in political history playing different sorts of roles and you know going up to the election and presidency of Donald Trump now
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, this is his probably his highest profile moment yet and his biggest opportunity to kind of show off all he's learned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop has been all over the Mueller investigation for Vox since day one. I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Before we go, Roger Stone's grandson posted a photo of himself to Instagram today. His t-shirt in the photo reads, Roger Stone did nothing wrong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the caption reads, the stone will keep rolling. Fuck Robert Mueller.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: This one's for the Rolling Stone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bad tattoo
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You might want to go back and read The card of the deal
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does it feel
--:-- Andrew Prokop: How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Calling Alex Jones Cause you're Roger Stone
