OMAHA, Neb. — Roger Stone, the troublemaker and political strategist who was once pardoned by Donald Trump of multiple felony convictions, joined his former ally on the road Friday. They were together on a campaign stopover in Iowa and aboard the former president’s personal plane on a flight to Las Vegas, two sources familiar with the trip told NBC News.
Trump was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday to launch his “Farmers for Trump” coalition; Stone was present but did not take the stage at the event. The former president will meet with grassroots activists in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Stone did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
Stone has not served as a formal adviser to Trump since the early days of his first presidential bid in 2015, but his actions in the lead up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol drew scrutiny from the Committee. House Select. during his investigation last year.
The select committee described Stone’s connections to extremist group leaders, including an Oath Keepers leader who was sentenced in May to 12 years in prison on seditious conspiracy charges.
Stone also spoke to Trump in late December 2020, after he had already used violent rhetoric in images captured by a documentary crew.
“I said f—- the vote, straight to the violence,” Stone said.
Cassidy Hutchinson, then-assistant to chief of staff Mark Meadows, also testified before Congress that Trump had directed Meadows to call Stone the day before the attack on the Capitol.
But Stone’s legal intersection with Trump is extensive. He was also at the center of investigations into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in its findings that Stone “took steps to gain inside knowledge” to the Trump campaign about when WikiLeaks would release new troves of its hacked material with the intent of damaging Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
In 2019, Stone was convicted in federal court of interfering with a congressional investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia. He was convicted of seven charges, including witness tampering and making false statements. He was later sentenced to more than three years in federal prison, but Trump eventually commuted his sentence and later pardoned his former ally.
