Roger Stone Suggests Using ‘Armed Guards’ During Election in Secret Video
Donald Trump is still mad he lost in 2020, and this year he and his allies are determined to upend the electoral process to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Intimidation is a key part of the plan. The MAGA faithful have spent the past four years threatening election officials, and last month the former president promised to jail election officials, workers, or anyone else guilty of “unscrupulous behavior.”
Roger Stone has some ideas of his own. In undercover audio provided exclusively to Rolling Stone by liberal documentarian Lauren Windsor, the Trump ally and notorious Republican “dirty trickster” suggests bringing armed personnel to election locations in order to get the results they want.
“We have to fight it out on a state-by-state basis, but you have to be ready,” Stone says in response to a question from an undercover reporter about how Republicans can stop Democrats from stealing the election. “When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you, and you dispute it. Instead, our guys just left.”
The comments came while Stone was mingling with attendees at an August event in Jacksonville billed as “A Night With Roger Stone.” The undercover reporter for Windsor’s digital investigative outfit, the Undercurrent, posed as a Republican operative and pressed Stone repeatedly about election security measures.
Stone may have been referring to the chaos that took place in Detroit’s Huntington Place convention center, a ballot-counting station, during the 2020 election. Republicans spread claims that fraudulent absentee and mail-in ballots had been delivered to Huntington Place — then known as the TCF Center — in an attempt to rig the count against Trump. Supporters of the former president banged on windows and attempted to force their way into the convention center, resulting in police blocking the entry. Law enforcement also removed at least one disruptive poll challenger from inside the tabulation room.
No evidence of systemic voter fraud was ever uncovered in Michigan, and several audits of the state’s election confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory.
But Stone, like Trump and his allies, publicly maintains that the 2020 election was stolen, and is prepared to punish those he holds at fault for the failure to keep Trump in office four years ago.
In the same conversation with the undercover Undercurrent reporter in August, a visibly irritated Stone bashes former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr when asked how Republicans will be able to protect the election despite no longer being “in control” like they were in 2020. Barr has been targeted by Trump and his allies for not using his position to keep the former president in power, while publicly affirming the month after the election that the Justice Department had “not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change” its outcome.
“We never really had control,” Stone says. “I was indicted by Trump’s Justice Department. Bill Barr is a traitorous piece of human garbage … he’s a piece of shit.
“Trump read a law review article, never checked his background, and made him attorney general. Once we get back in, he has to go to prison, he has to go to prison, he’s a criminal,” he continues, jabbing his finger emphatically at the undercover individual. (In reality, Barr took it easy on Stone, intervening in his case and giving him a lighter sentencing recommendation than he had been given previously.)
Stone also had words for Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser. Stone described Kushner as a “real estate developer” who had no business advising the former president during their 2020 election crisis. “What does he know about this? I don’t care who you’re married [to] — what do you know about this?” Stone says. “He doesn’t know anything about anything, other than being born rich.”
The longtime political operative made clear that he feels that Trump has “much better” people around him now, and that Republicans are making headway in laying the groundwork to thwart Democrats this November.
“It’s a state question; it’s not a federal question. So it’s not who controls the federal government, it’s who controls the state government,” Stone says in the same conversation. “They use the Justice Department to harass you when you’re in office, but this is about an election. We gotta fight it out on a state-by-state basis.”
The Undercurrent also recorded the Q&A portion following Stone’s speech at the event, during which Stone lauds these state-level efforts, touting how the California Republican Assembly has worked to have counties purge “undeliverable addresses” from voter rolls in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
Stone also suggested impeaching federal judges. “There is a mechanism in our Constitution for the impeachment of a federal judge,” he says. “Now, in the past, it’s only been used in cases of corruption. But since they, the Democrats, want to make issues outside of corruption a defining issue for the confirmation of the Supreme Court, then I think it’s fair for all judges to be judged on that basis.”
Stone did not reply to a request for comment Rolling Stone sent Thursday morning.
Windsor and her team have made a documentary, Gonzo for Democracy, chronicling the growth of Trumpism, election denial, and religious extremism. The documentary will premiere Thursday night in Los Angeles.
The August event wasn’t the first time Windsor and her team have spoken with Stone and encouraged him to lay out his views on how Republicans should approach the 2024 election. In a recording made by Windsor and the Undercurrent at an event in March at Mar-a-Lago, Stone brags that “this time” if Republicans want to challenge election activity, they “have a lawyer and a judge — his home phone number standing by — so you can stop it.”
“We made no preparations last time, none … There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election,” Stone said. “We’re not there yet, but there’s things that can be done.”
Stone addressed these comments during the event in August, claiming they had been “twisted by the media,” and that it’s perfectly rational for Republican attorneys to “have the [phone] number of the duty judge in case there’s need to file an emergency motion based on actions that indicate anomalies or improper conduct of the count.”
Having judges on call to hear challenges is just one facet of a full-frontal electoral offensive planned by Republicans — parts of which are already being enacted. The former president has long been claiming the election will be fraudulent, preemptively sowing distrust in outcomes. The Republican National Committee announced over the summer an initiative to recruit 100,000 “volunteers and attorneys” prepared to monitor elections and level challenges across the country. Meanwhile, Trump legal ally Cleta Mitchell has dedicated the years since 2020 to building a grassroots network of election denial activists who are targeting state lawmakers and local election boards.
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, nearly 70 pro-Trump election conspiracy theorists are currently working as county election officials in the critical states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
“There’s more going on than you think,” Stone told one attendee at his August event. “That’s the good news.”
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