When pressed in public by those people he deems enemies, Roger Stone works hard to play down his role in the 2020 election subversion scheme that led to a brutal attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The insurrection that unfolded there—incited by ex-President Donald Trump—was the product, at least in part, of weeks of alleged scheming from a cast of characters that the Jan. 6 committee has come to expose through a battery of subpoenas it has issued as public hearings loom this April.
In the meantime, The Washington Post has reviewed an upcoming documentary about Stone from Danish filmmakers entitled A Storm Foretold. It is an arguable embarrassment of riches for the committee.
Stone was hit with a panel subpoena last November, and when he finally appeared for his closed-door deposition, it was December. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right before slamming the investigation of the Capitol attack as an anti-Trump fishing expedition.
Though he has played coy with the committee, he allowed documentarians to follow him around at various points for two years and at length, to boot. Stone was often filmed at critical junctures during Trump’s push to overturn the election results.
More than 20 hours of video from the A Storm Foretold filmmakers was reviewed by the Post. The film will be released later this year.
What the news outlet found was footage that appeared to offer deeply troubling corroboration of widespread reporting on Stone’s conduct before, during, and after the attack, from Stone’s pushing of Trump’s election lies to his relationships with extremist networks and militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
Stone maintains he had no role in the riot on Jan. 6 and has accused reporters of misattributing his statements.
The committee declined to comment on the film or Stone’s reaction. As for Stone, he could not be reached for comment.
On Nov. 5, 2020, Stone directed his underlings to find retired military or police to serve the Stop the Steal campaign. He eventually asked them to join a Signal chat with other allies called “Friends of Stone.”
In a scene from the film where Stone’s cell phone screen is visible, Proud Boy and longtime FBI informant Enrique Tarrio appears to be a part of that group chat, as well as Oath Keeper leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes.
Tarrio was arrested two days before the insurrection after being stopped by D.C. police when he arrived at a local airport. There was a warrant out for his arrest from December when he defaced a church and set a Black Lives Matter banner aflame. Police searched him and found two empty high-capacity rifle magazines. Tarrio told authorities he planned on giving them to someone in D.C. who wanted to attend the Jan. 6 rally.
Last month, it was reported that the FBI was quietly probing a Jan. 5 meeting between Tarrio and Oath Keeper ringleader Elmer Rhodes in a D.C. hotel garage parking lot.
Tarrio claims the meeting was happenstance. His lawyers insist there was no coordination between the two extremist networks.
Rhodes is now awaiting trial for seditious conspiracy. During a status hearing last week in federal court, prosecutors said they are still reviewing some of his devices. It has been suggested by prosecutors that Rhodes deleted a flurry of messages from his cell phone before the Feds seized it.
The documentary also depicts what appears to be an “action plan,” mocked up by Stone, The Washington Post reported.
The plan was visible on a laptop in the film and it appeared to describe how Trump’s team intended to pressure state lawmakers to reject their respective election results.
Stone also spent that day chatting with Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced ex-national security adviser.
Like Stone, Flynn eventually secured a pardon from Trump. Flynn had lied to the FBI—twice—about his contacts with Russian government officials, including Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Flynn resigned only about a month after joining the Trump White House in 2017 after misleading then-Vice President Mike Pence about discussions he had with Russian officials about U.S. sanctions leftover from the Obama administration.
Though Flynn initially entered two guilty pleas, after hiring Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to defend him, he withdrew his plea and cried foul play by federal prosecutors. He was pardoned a day before Thanksgiving in 2020.
As for Stone, he was pardoned for seven felonies two days before Christmas, along with Trump's ex-Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. Trump also pardoned Charles Kushner, a real estate tycoon, and Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, who pleaded guilty to over a dozen tax fraud crimes.
Stop the Steal leader Ali Alexander celebrated Stone’s pardon in a livestream. Alexander, who has already been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, noted that the “leash” had been removed from him and Stone.
“Something Roger and I have been planning for a long time” was finally possible, Alexander said at the time.
The very last week of December 2020, Stone was trying to rake more cash in online, asking donors to fund private security for demonstrators on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
A link to the fundraising site for “Stop the Steal Security Project”—only available now through the Wayback Machine—shows Stone describing Biden’s victory as illegitimate and putting the blame for violence at earlier pro-Trump rallies on antifa or advocates of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement.
Stone reportedly raised at least $40,000 through the site, with donations allegedly funneled to a lawyer friend.
The Republican operative was in Washington on Jan. 5 and delivered remarks at a pro-Trump Save America rally. He railed about the “epic struggle” for the future of the U.S. while promoting the lie that Trump won the election. And as he vowed to be “shoulder to shoulder” with demonstrators for protests the next day, as his goon squad of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys looked on.
When the day came, however, things went hinky.
Jan. 6 rally organizers promoted Stone as a key speaker at the Ellipse, but in the film reviewed by The Washington Post, Stone’s aide appeared to struggle mightily to reach rally organizers. Further, a secure route for Stone to travel from the Willard Hotel in downtown D.C. to the Ellipse did not materialize.
Stone blamed ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon for the foul-up in the film.
Filmmakers captured how Stone’s plans appeared to shift by mid-morning on Jan. 6 after he bumped into Bernie Kerik, the former police commissioner for New York City. Kerik, according to investigators of the Jan. 6 probe, was likely privy to much of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s bogus elector scheme.
The director of A Storm Foretold told reporters at the Post that after Stone and Kerik met, Stone abruptly changed plans: He suddenly did not want to go to the Ellipse. Stone though he was being snubbed.
As the Post noted, at least one Oath Keeper affidavit that has emerged in the Department of Justice’s investigation of Jan. 6 has suggested as much. The Trump ally was outraged at the lack of “VIP treatment” he received, the affidavit said.
Once Trump’s remarks got underway, Stone is heard in the documentary complaining to an aide about the perceived snub, saying he even went so far as to complain to Julie Fancelli, the Publix supermarket heiress, who reportedly donated $3 million for the rally on Jan. 6.
Rally organizers not only blocked him from speaking but they blocked right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, too.
”I just told her, ‘You spent 300 grand and neither Jones nor I are speaking,’” Stone is heard saying in the documentary.
Though filmmakers captured hours of Stone on tape, once the rioting was underway on Jan. 6, the film crew was told they couldn’t see him. Stone, they learned, was taking a nap.
Requests by text for Stone to speak with the film’s director of photography, Frederik Marbell, went unanswered for roughly a half-hour as chaos reigned outside the Capitol.
Stone promised to visit with the director in his room over text, but Stone never showed. Marbell managed to sneak into his room, though, once room service entered. There was Stone. He was not asleep, but on the phone.
The longtime D.C. insider and operative plays both sides of the coin in the film, much like in life. He is heard condemning the attacks unfolding mere blocks from his hotel room while also suggesting the violent outcome was inevitable because Trump couldn’t get a “fair and honest judicial opinion” or a “fair” election.
Stone left the Willard on Jan. 6 just around 5 PM looking to hop a flight from Dulles Airport. It would be another 40 minutes until the Capitol was declared secure.
Around 6:01 PM, Trump took to Twitter and echoed the tirades Stone went on in the documentary.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Trump tweeted.
