Roger Stone's claim that vulgar video of him calling for Trump's impeachment is "AI fake" debunked.
The "pre-eminent Trumpist" who worked on the shadow contingency campaign to replace Trump
Roger Stone has, once again, found himself in a PR crisis, as this (warning: vulgar language) clip of him calling for Trump’s impeachment and imprisonment and referring to Ivanka as the President’s “abortionist b!tch” daughter gains ever increasing traction on X:
This clip comes from the most excellent documentary, A Storm Foretold, which is a must watch and shows how, exactly, Stone organized Stop the Steal and recruited and coordinated law enforcement and military personnel, including Proud Boys, who encouraged the violence on J6.
It was recorded in January, 2021 and the documentary made waves when it was released in March, 2023.
Since then, his claim has been consistent: it was an AI fake. This despite the film’s release several months before ElevenLabs and other rudimentary if high-fidelity deep fake capable AI models hit the market in mid to late-2023.
The most glaring refutation of Roger’s claim, though, is that he hasn’t sued the filmmaker. Roger has been a prolific litigant throughout his career, and an AI fake of this magnitude would be a slam dunk.
Why hasn’t Stone sued the filmmaker?
Could it be because it is real?
This clip is consistent in tone and theme with the rest of the documentary. I can not more strongly encourage you watch it.
A reader sent me this outstanding column today. It was printed in August 2007, back when people read the printed newspaper.
Same story, different time
There were several juicy details that I was previously unaware of. Primarily, that Roger Stone approached a similar problem in the same way back then.
I’ll break it down because it’s fun.
Roger Stone left a nasty and profane voicemail for the 83 year old father of then Democrat Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer. Rather than owning it, he denied it profusely.
I was able to dig up the recording at question from the archives. You can decide for yourself:
His claim that it was not him took a hit when it came out that the call originated from his home address. He said that couldn’t be because he was at the theater that Monday, watching a play. He dropped that claim when it was revealed the theater was closed on Mondays.
Then he claimed someone broke into his house and the call was - get this - a deep fake. He said it was the product of “spoofing” tech and high-end editing software.
When that failed to gain traction, he even claimed it was recorded by a comedian and master impressionist, Randy Credico, who had introduced Roger to Al Sharpton.
And this is the detail that made my jaw drop: According to columnist David Segal, Roger and Al Sharpton hit it off so well that Roger, the “preeminent Trumpist,” helped run Al’s 2004 campaign for POTUS, even loaning money to the campaign and giving Sharpton his own credit card for campaign expenses.
Of course he later denied that too.
State GOP ops
Last week, I reported on my interaction with New York gubernatorial candidate Derrick Gibson. I found Gibson because of his announcement of an event to promote his campaign headlined by Roger Stone and Ivan Raikling, the J6 “pip bomber.”
Gibson told me on X that he was planning to take a “wrecking ball” to the NYGOP and tear it down then take it over.
Roger stone has a longstanding pattern of supporting candidates just like Gibson.
Here in Michigan, libertarian operatives Shane Trejo and Kristen Megan Kelly took credit for Trump-endorsed senatorial candidate Mike Rogers’ loss. Trejo bragged on message boards that he worked for Roger Stone.
In 2022, Roger was a consultant for several failed Christian nationalist candidates in Oklahoma, including my favorite, Jackson Lahmeyer.
Jackson, who is Clay Clark’s pastor, prophesied during his 2022 campaign for US Senate that if he didn’t win we would face “1000 years of darkness.” While his campaign failed, Stone and Flynn did succeed in taking over OKGOP, which has elected 7 Mountains Mandate-promoting Charity Lynch as state party chair.
Stone is also very much involved in the fight to overthrow the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) with his and Flynn’s sponsored org, the Florida Republican Assembly. Here is Stone’s message to RPOF Chair Evan Power, who has wisely removed all Florida Republican Assembly members from the state party.
Of course, any similarities between this message and Stone’s 2007 voicemail to Bernie Spitzer and his 2021 phone conversation about President Trump are purely coincidental…
What Roger did with his anger towards Trump
I was told by a whistleblower, who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal, who was a direct witness to multiple private conversations between Stone and Flynn in 2021 and 2022 that they frequently discussed a campaign for Flynn for President.
This is supported by another direct witness, who told me that they heard from one of Flynn’s direct family members in January of 2024 that the family was certain that Flynn would be the next President - despite him not being on any state’s primary ballot.
It’s further supported by this clip from early 2024 of Ivan Raiklin on Alex Jones, who said that if Trump were assassinated, the next option was “sooo much better.”
And it’s also supported by two public social media posts from Roger Stone himself, where he openly declared that he was helping Flynn run a “contingency campaign” for Flynn for President, a “Plan B” in case something happened to Trump.
And of course, Flynn himself showed us his ambitions:
I found myself in the middle of all of this when I reported 5 weeks before the assassination attempt on a plan where state GOP activists where training delegates to take over the convention from the floor and place a new candidate into nomination. That reporting put me in contact with Trump’s team and led to RNC disciplining Shelby Busch and others in Arizona.
But, of course, “it’s all lies.”