A secret recording has revealed the plan of Trump political consultant Roger Stone to help the former president challenge the 2024 election results.
Liberal journalist Lauren Windsor provided Rolling Stone magazine with a recording in which the self-described “dirty trickster” says Donald Trump and his allies are on an “offensive footing” and that they’re better prepared than they were during 2020.
“At least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge — his home phone number standing by — so you can stop it,” Stone says on the recording. “We made no preparations last time, none … There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election. We’re not there yet, but there’s things that can be done.”
The recording includes conversations between Stone and Windsor as well as ones between Stone and Windsor’s colleague Ally Sammarco. The audio was recorded at a Catholic Prayer for Trump event on March 19 at Mar-a-Lago.
On the recording, Stone appears optimistic about Trump’s electoral chances as well as about the former president’s deepening legal woes, suggesting that Florida Judge Aileen Cannon is about the dismiss the case brought by the Department of Justice regarding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
“We are beating them,” Stone says on the audio, before he goes on to say that Trump’s “trial in Georgia is falling apart. I think the judge is on the verge of dismissing the charges against him in Florida. They’re delayed in New York City and they’re now delayed in Washington.”
Trump has since been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to corruptly subvert the outcome of the 2016 election. Trump directed a hush money payment to be made to adult actor Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged 2006 affair in lead up to the election and in the aftermath of the release of the Access Hollywood tape on which he bragged about sexually assaulting women.
While Judge Cannon has made rulings beneficial to Trump in the classified documents case, she rejected an effort to have it dismissed last week.
At one point during the recording, Sammarco asks Stone what will stop Trump’s opponents from committing “voter fraud” such as via “ballot harvesting.” Stone says, “In some states, it’ll be easier to stop. In other places, it won’t.”
He adds that they should be “suing in half a dozen places.”
“We’re finally now on an offensive footing,” he says, before going on to note that now that the Republican National Committee is in the hands of Trump allies, they can spend more money on monitoring elections.
Stone also mentions “changes in state law, real-time voter list monitoring, going to court as we just did to challenge some of the vote laws.”
The longtime Republican strategist tells Windsor that the election can be “stolen again.” He argues that Trump’s legal problems are a way to “suck up his money, suck up his time, and create the reason why their theft is plausible, believable.”
He also shared his worries that “overconfidence” among Trump supporters could decrease voter turnout, adding that Trump allies are prepared to use “lawyers, judges, technology,” to take aim at the election results.
Stone told the magazine on Tuesday that “All of the election integrity provisions that I suggested are perfectly legal and should be part of any ballot Security effort.”
The consultant played a key role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his attempts to affect election outcomes go all the way back to the 2000 election when he was one of the leaders of the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot which helped stop the Florida recount with the aim of making sure President George W Bush would eke out a win.
Stone blasted the recording and threatened legal action against Windsor in social media posts on Tuesday, writing on Facebook that “Recording people without their knowledge and consent in Florida is a crime even when what the person says is innocuous.”
He also repeatedly referred to the recording and the stories surrounding it as a “nothingburger.”
“I will sue Lauren and appeal as many times as may be necessary,” he wrote on X.
