Police: Stone, wife ‘verbally accosted’

Stranger unleashes rant at Trump ally outside Fort Lauderdale home

FORT LAUDERDALE — Roger Stone, a longtime ally and confidante of former President Donald Trump, says a stranger on a bicycle menaced him and his wife recently in Fort Lauderdale by unleashing an expletive-filled rant at them.

Stone told the police that the man told him he’d “die in prison” and called him a “Russian traitor” on Jan. 8, an apparent reference to the investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 election. It’s an inquiry that ensnared Stone with charges of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the U.S. House investigation, but Trump swept that away last month by fully pardoning Stone.

The police report, obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, stands in contrast to a story being recounted by some websites in which the encounter led to physical violence. According to the police, the Stones instead were “verbally accosted” outside their Fort Lauderdale home, and Roger Stone contacted the police for precaution. He wanted “this incident be documented in case the person returns or the situation escalates,” an officer wrote.

According to police, here’s what happened:

Stone, 68, and his wife, Nydia Stone, 73, told the cops that they had returned home from dinner

when they were approached by a man on a bicycle.

As the bicyclist neared, he seemed to recognize Stone and yelled at him, calling him names, Stone told the police. The man rode his bicycle in figure-eight loop patterns in the road in front of them and kept yelling at Stone.

Stone told the cops the encounter “appeared to be politically motivated” and that he believed the incident was an opportunistic situation and not pre-planned.

Roger Stone could not be reached for comment on his cellphone.

Stone has known Trump for decades and for much of the 2016 campaign, Stone was an informal adviser to Trump.

Stone was convicted of a seven-count indictment that included charges of obstructing the U.S. House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election. The judge declared Stone was not prosecuted “for standing up for the president,” but “he was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”

Stone was arrested in a predawn raid at his Fort Lauderdale home on Jan. 25, 2019, and emerged that day from the downtown federal courthouse with his arms and hands outstretched in a Richard Nixon-style “V” for victory salute.

He went to trial in that November and was convicted on seven counts, including telling Congress five lies, and obstructing lawmakers from reviewing documents.

Stone was sentenced to start serving 40 months in prison, but Trump commuted

Stone’s sentence in July and pardoned him in December.

In a post-pardon interview with Fox News Channel, Stone said he had “an enormous debt of gratitude to God Almighty for giving the president the strength and the courage to recognize that my prosecution was a completely politically-motivated witch hunt.” In a statement, Stone called the pardon an “extraordinary act of justice … completely erasing the criminal conviction to which I was subjected in a Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges.”

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