Roger Stone

Roger Stone is an American political consultant and lobbyist. In January 2019 he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. on seven counts arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election; a jury convicted him on all seven in November 2019. His sentence was commuted in July 2020 and he received a full pardon in December 2020. The Library of Congress name authority record gives his birth year as 1952.

Consulting and Lobbying Career

The Mueller Report records that Stone worked with Paul Manafort “from approximately 1980 until the mid-1990s through various consulting and lobbying firms,” and that Donald Trump first met Manafort in 1982 when Trump hired the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. A 1984 New York Times item cited in his Library of Congress authority record describes him as a partner in “the lobbying and political consulting firm of Black, Manafort & Stone” in Alexandria, Virginia. In early 2016, according to the Mueller Report, Stone and Thomas Barrack both recommended Manafort to candidate Trump.

The 2019 indictment describes Stone in its own words as “a political consultant who worked for decades in U.S. politics and on U.S. political campaigns,” who “was an official on the U.S. presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump until in or around August 2015, and maintained regular contact with and publicly supported the Trump Campaign through the 2016 election.”

The Mueller Investigation

Most of the Mueller Report’s discussion of Stone is redacted in the March 2019 public version, marked “Harm to Ongoing Matter” because his prosecution was then pending. Appendix D of the report lists United States v. Roger Stone among the cases the Special Counsel transferred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, noting it was “awaiting trial.”

Two Stone-related passages survive unredacted. The report notes that Stone was among the identified U.S. persons who retweeted or responded to Twitter accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency, citing two of his tweets from April and May 2016. Separately, it describes a May 2016 in-person meeting in Florida, brokered by Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo, at which a Ukrainian associate named Alexei Rasin offered to sell Stone material he claimed showed Hillary Clinton’s involvement in money laundering. The report states Stone refused the offer, “stating that Trump would not pay for opposition research,” and that the Office “did not identify evidence of a connection between the outreach or the meeting and Russian interference efforts.”

In his written answers to the Special Counsel, reproduced in Appendix C, Trump said he “spoke by telephone with Roger Stone from time to time during the campaign” but had “no recollection of the specifics of any conversations” between June 1 and November 8, 2016.

Indictment, Trial and Sentence

The grand jury returned a seven-count indictment on 24 January 2019, signed by Special Counsel Mueller. The counts were:

• Count One — obstruction of proceeding, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1505 and 2: that from around May through at least December 2017 Stone corruptly obstructed the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s inquiry by testifying falsely at a September 2017 hearing, failing to turn over and lying about responsive records, submitting a misleading letter to the committee, and attempting to have a witness testify falsely or not at all.
• Counts Two through Six — false statements, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a)(2) and 2: five separate false statements made to the committee on or about 26 September 2017, concerning whether he held documents referring to the head of the organization that published the stolen material, whether his claimed August 2016 contact ran through a single intermediary, whether he asked that intermediary to act on his behalf, whether he communicated with that intermediary by text or email, and whether he had discussed those conversations with anyone involved in the Trump campaign.
• Count Seven — witness tampering, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(1): corruptly persuading or attempting to persuade a witness with intent to influence, delay or prevent testimony in an official proceeding.

The indictment identifies the entities and individuals involved only as “Organization 1,” “Person 1” and “Person 2,” not by name.

On 15 November 2019 a jury before Judge Amy Berman Jackson returned a verdict of guilty on all seven counts, and the court denied Stone’s motion for a judgment of acquittal.

On 20 February 2020 Judge Jackson imposed 40 months’ imprisonment on Count One, 12 months on each of Counts Two through Six, and 18 months on Count Seven, all running concurrently — a total of 40 months. She added 24 months of supervised release on each count, also concurrent, a $20,000 fine, and special assessments totalling$700. The Pardon Attorney’s register records the supervised release as conditioned on 250 hours of community service. The court permitted Stone to surrender voluntarily no earlier than two weeks after it ruled on a pending motion for a new trial.

Commutation, Then Pardon

These were three distinct events, in this order.

Conviction (15 November 2019). The jury found Stone guilty on all seven counts.

Commutation (10 July 2020). The government’s notice to the court, filed 13 July 2020, states that the President “commuted the sentence imposed by the Court on … the defendant, Roger J. Stone, including the prison sentence, supervised release term, and unpaid portion of the fine,” and adds explicitly that “Roger J. Stone’s felony convictions — for obstructing the United States Congress, making false statements, and tampering with a witness — still stand.” Stone’s counsel filed the same day agreeing that the grant “commutes the entirety of the sentence.” A commutation removes punishment; it does not disturb the conviction. The Pardon Attorney’s commutation register lists the grant under 10 July 2020.

Pardon (23 December 2020). More than five months later, the Pardon Attorney’s separate pardon register lists Stone under 23 December 2020. A pardon, unlike the commutation that preceded it, reaches the conviction itself.

The docket in United States v. Stone was terminated on 23 November 2020, a month before the pardon.

What Is Not Established Here

This page previously consisted of two sentences and no sources. Its central claim — that Stone “was convicted in 2019 on charges related to the Mueller investigation and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump” — is correct as far as it goes, but it collapsed three separate events into one and omitted the July 2020 commutation entirely. It also carried no dates, no counts, and no court.

Several widely repeated details about Stone are not asserted here because no primary record was located for them in this pass: his exact date of birth (the Library of Congress record’s day and month are transcribed from Wikipedia, so only the year is used); his role in the 1972 and 1980 Republican presidential campaigns and in the Nixon and Reagan administrations; the identity of “Organization 1,” “Person 1” and “Person 2” in the indictment, which the charging document deliberately withholds; the circumstances of his January 2019 arrest; the February 2020 dispute over the government’s sentencing recommendation and the resignation of the prosecutors; his post-pardon activities, including any role in events surrounding 6 January 2021; and any characterization of his political orientation, which this project does not assert in its own voice.

Federal Election Commission disbursement records searched for this pass returned entries under “Stone, Roger” that could not be tied to this individual with confidence — several are plainly a different person — so no campaign-finance figure is stated here.