Political operative Roger Stone tied to Gaetz.

Roger Stone, the political operator and self-proclaimed dirty trickster from Fort Lauderdale, offered a spirited defense of congressman Matt Gaetz on Wednesday, declaring that the Panhandle Republican was being smeared by forces intent on taking out a young, conservative leader.

Gaetz is under sudden and intense scrutiny after a New York Times report a day earlier said he is under federal investigation into whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him.

“The ‘leaked’ smear on Congressman Matt Gaetz is an extortion play and an effort to destroy the up and coming conservative leader who has the balls to call the left out,” Stone wrote on Parler, the social media site that has become popular with supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Stone also condemned one of the New York Times reporters who wrote about the Justice Department investigation of Gaetz.

Stone called reporter Michael Schmidt “the single most dishonest fabricator of the Russian hoax narrative in American press corps. And now he’s doing it again with the smear of @MattGaetz. Watch for the slap down of this cretin #The NewYorkTimessucks.”

Schmidt was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for coverage of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

He also produced much of the newspaper’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Stone has a special reason to dislike Mueller and coverage of the investigation: In early 2019, the FBI arrested Stone in a pre-dawn raid at his Fort Lauderdale home and charged as part of the Mueller investigation. He was later convicted, then pardoned by Trump.

Stone wasn’t immediately available for comment Wednesday.

Ties to Trump

Gaetz and Stone share a powerful bond: their devotion to Trump.

Gaetz, a young Republican congressman from the Florida Panhandle, quickly rose to prominence via cable TV appearances in which he lauded Trump and a variety of attention-grabbing stunts like appearing with a gas mask during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Some Trump supporters wanted Gaetz to challenge U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., next year.

Stone has been a decadeslong friend and adviser to Trump.

The Gaetz-Stone relationship is receiving a burst of new attention, partly because of social media selfies posted several years ago and the New York Times report on Tuesday. Gaetz said there is no truth to the allegation.

Pictures

A picture posted on social media on July 8, 2017, shows Gaetz, Stone and then-Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg.

Greenberg was arrested last year on federal charges that he stalked a political opponent, illegally used a state database to create fake IDs and sex-trafficked a minor.

The New York Times reported that the Greenberg investigation had broadened to Gaetz, who is serving his third term in the House.

In posting the 2017 picture on Twitter, Greenberg wrote that it was “great catching up with Gaetz and Stone.”

Gaetz posted the same picture of the trio on his Facebook page. “Enjoyed dinner with Roger Stone and Seminole County Tax Collector (and 2nd Amendment champion) Joel Greenberg,” Gaetz wrote.

The congressman posted a different picture from the same evening on Twitter, showing just Gaetz and Stone, without Greenberg. “Enjoyed dinner with the brightest political mind in America!” Gaetz wrote.

Pushing pardon

Late in 2019, Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the U.S. House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s election meddling.

Stone denied any wrongdoing, and both he and Trump long labeled allegations of 2016 election meddling a hoax.

Last year, Gaetz was an outspoken champion of a presidential pardon for Stone.

In multiple appearances Gaetz called on the president to use his clemency power on behalf of Stone.

In July, Trump commuted Stone’s three-year, fourmonth sentence days before Stone was to report to prison. Later that month, Stone praised Gaetz’s efforts on behalf and referred to him in a Fox News interview as “congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida who I hope to live long enough to see in the White House.”

On Dec. 23, Trump gave Stone a full pardon.

Before the 2016 Trump campaign, Stone had been well known to political insiders for decades. He has a tattoo of former President Richard Nixon and was involved in the “Brooks Brothers riot,” in which dozens of well-dressed Republicans packed the Miami-Dade County Elections Office to stop the recount in the George W. Bush-Al Gore presidential election.

Several weeks ago, Stone praised Gaetz. In an interview shown on RT America, a Kremlin-funded news site formerly known as Russia Today, Stone said he’d support Trump if he ran for the presidency again in 2024.

If Trump doesn’t run, “we need to have a back up candidate” who can win on a Trump-like platform. When interviewer Steve Malzberg asks who he’d support if Trump didn’t run, Stone said, “Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida. A scrapper. A brawler. A guy with enormous courage. He would be older than Jack Kennedy was when Jack Kennedy ran for president.” Gaetz is 38.

Online connection?

Graphika, a firm that says it uses artificial intelligence to analyze social media, produced a report last summer entitled “Facebook’s Roger Stone Takedown: Facebook Removes Inauthentic Network Attributed to Political Operative.” Graphika said Facebook provided it with information to analyze before the takedown. The Orlando Sentinel and the New York Times have cited the Graphika report. The Times said “a network of fake social media accounts” linked to Stone “have promoted false accusations about Mr. Greenberg’s rivals similar to rumors that prosecutors accused Mr. Greenberg of secretly trying to spread.”

Graphika issued its report last July, just days before Stone was set to report to prison, and days before Trump commuted his sentence.

In an email last summer, Stone emphatically rejected Graphika’s “allegations that I own or control or have ever owned or controlled 100 ‘fake’ Facebook pages.”