What is Roger Stone’s net worth? Here’s everything you need to know
What is Roger Stone’s net worth?
This question is probably one of the most searched queries in relation to Roger Stone. Over the years, Stone has earned a reputation as a “master of the political dark arts,” according to Fox Business. The American political consultant, author and longtime Trump ally. So what is Stone’s net worth?
While his earnings from his short work with President Trump’s 2016 campaign weren’t public, in 2018, his net worth was reported to be $5 million, reflecting money earned from not only his political career but also his work as an author.
To date, he has written seven books, with 2013’s The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ ranking as a New York Times bestseller. However, in recent years, Stone’s fortunes have reportedly taken a hit after he was accused of facilitating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In 2019, Stone was indicted on charges of obstructing a congressional probe into whether he coordinated between the Trump campaign and Russia, lying to lawmakers and witness tampering. Although he denied the allegations, Stone was convicted in November.
According to Fox Business, he attempted to raise $2 million to bankroll his defence, starting a legal defence account via crowdfunding that successfully raised $100,000. Stone also has a website called Stone Cold Truth, which sells everything from Roger Stone t-shirts and posters to “special edition” signed rocks, all in an effort to cover legal fees.
In 2019, Stone and his wife Nydia Stone reportedly gave up their Fort Lauderdale luxury home in order to save money Stone needed for legal costs, which were constantly mounting.
Stone is now worth an estimated $50,000.
Who is Roger Stone?
Who is Roger Stone in the first place, and what impact has he had on politics in the US over the years? Stone was raised in Lewisboro, New York, in a white working-class family. After high school, Stone moved to Washington DC to attend George Washington University, which he never graduated from. Although some of you may have heard his name after he was found guilty of obstructing the Russia investigation, Stone is first and foremost a conservative political consultant who has been around Republican politics for half a century.
Stone made his debut in national politics at 19, when he sent campaign contributions in the name of a socialist organisation to Richard Nixon’s rival in the 1972 Republican presidential primary. He then sent a letter to The New Hampshire Union-Leader with the donation receipt, in an attempt to undermine Nixon’s competitor.
Since the 1980s, the self-described “dirty trickster” has been on a mission to make Donald Trump president. It took Stone nearly 20 years to realise his dream, but he did it. After working on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and despite parting ways with it in August 2015, Stone has since then remained a loyal Trump supporter. While Trump says he fired Stone for hogging the media spotlight; Stone says he quit because Trump attacked Megyn Kelly—no one knows what happened exactly.
And apparently, being this loyal paid off for Stone. As mentioned above, the former strategist was convicted of seven felony counts in November 2019. Stone was convicted of five counts of making false statements to the FBI and congressional investigators, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice.
It was strongly believed that Stone was communicating with a Russian hacker as well as with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, which was shed light on as the FBI looked for connections between Trump’s campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. For that, a federal judge sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison for his crimes, as well as a $20,000 fine, four years of probation after his prison term, and 250 hours of community service.
But on Friday 10 July 2020, President Trump signed an Executive Grant of Clemency commuting the “unjust” sentence of Stone. A White House statement said “Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency. There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia.”
Shortly after that statement was shared, Trump reiterated it by tweeting, “Roger Stone was targeted by an illegal Witch Hunt that never should have taken place.”
Roger Stone was targeted by an illegal Witch Hunt that never should have taken place. It is the other side that are criminals, including Biden and Obama, who spied on my campaign - AND GOT CAUGHT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2020
Just four days before Stone was supposed to begin his prison sentence, Trump officially commuted it. Stone has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Russia, but messages he has sent to the hacker accused of a cyberattack on the DNC continued to raise questions.
“It’s rare that I’m accused of something that I’m not guilty of,” Stone once told the New Yorker in 2008.
Was Roger Stone working with Russia?
Of course, nothing can be said for sure but the evidence is pretty compelling. On 21 August 2016, Stone posted a series of tweets regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign: “Trust me, it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary.”
On 1 October 2016, Stone tweeted: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done.”
On 3 October he tweeted: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp.”
Four days later, WikiLeaks published its first set of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Since, Stone said he had “back-channel communication with Assange,” but has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, saying that he had been getting his information from a mutual friend he shares with Assange.
According to The Atlantic, Stone was in direct communication with WikiLeaks via Twitter in the days leading up to the election. On 9 November 2016, the morning after Trump won the presidential election, Wikileaks wrote to Stone, “Happy? We are now more free to communicate.”
In October 2018, NBC News reported that Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and close friend of Stone knew in advance that Clinton’s campaign emails had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks. Furthermore, The New York Times reported that Stone discussed the WikiLeaks document dumps with both Steve Bannon, then the chairman of the Trump campaign, and Matthew Boyle, who at the time was the Washington editor of the far-right website Breitbart, which was previously spearheaded by Bannon.
Roger Stone and Donald Trump
Stone is said to have been the first influential person to truly believe in Trump’s political potential. According to Business Insider, in 1988, Stone tried to persuade Trump to run for president, which he decided against it. However, when Trump launched 12 years later a presidential exploratory committee, Stone chaired it.
Since then, both kept a close professional and political relationship. Stone has been characterised as Trump’s “longest-serving adviser.” Like Trump, Stone has always had a penchant for controversy, making unsubstantiated claims and promoting conspiracy theories. He told The New Yorker in 2008 that “The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring.”
Stone encouraged Trump’s infamous birther conspiracy, which claimed that President Obama wasn’t born in the US and said that Bill Clinton was a serial rapist and fathered a son.
In the 2017 Netflix documentary titled Get Me Roger Stone, Trump said of Stone: “He loves the game, he has fun with it, and he’s very good at it.”
Roger Stone and Richard Nixon
After working for Nixon’s campaign in the 1970s, Stone maintained a close relationship with the president and regularly dined with him in the years following the president’s resignation. Stone has remained an unapologetic Nixon supporter to this day—he even has a tattoo of Nixon’s face across his back and a large photograph of the former president over his bed.
Roger Stone and Ronald Reagan
In 1976, Stone joined Ronald Reagan’s first (unsuccessful) run for the Republican presidential nomination as national youth director. Four years later, Stone took on the role of political director of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, helping pave Reagan’s path to the White House.
But instead of taking a position in the Reagan administration, Stone went on to start the political consulting and lobbying firm called Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater, along with Paul Manafort, who, decades later, would become Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman. The firm’s clients included Trump and Rupert Murdoch, among others.
In 1988, Stone was drawn back into campaigning when George H.W. Bush ran for president. He served as one of Bush’s senior consultants and also continued jumping between the campaign trails. Stone was kicked off Kansas Republican Bob Dole’s presidential campaign after he and his wife were caught soliciting “similar couples or exceptional muscular” men for group sex. Stone first denied the accusations at the time but later admitted that they were true.
