Political dirty trick artist Roger Stone has confirmed he will be in Utah ahead of next week’s Utah GOP convention after endorsing 3rd Congressional District Republican candidate Jason Preston.
Stone announced his upcoming visit on his Telegram channel Thursday morning as part of an attack on a previous story in The Salt Lake Tribune revealing his involvement in Preston’s campaign. Stone has been banned from most other social media platforms. He was banned from Twitter in 2017 after a vulgar tirade targeting cable news hosts. Stone was kicked off of Facebook and Instagram in 2020 for using a network of fake accounts used to amplify disinformation around the 2016 election. Stone denied the allegations from Facebook.
Stone’s public involvement in Preston’s campaign mostly follows a plan laid out in an internal campaign memo obtained by The Tribune. There have been a few deviations, though. Instead of publishing Stone’s endorsement of Preston on the heavily trafficked right-wing website The Gateway Pundit, it was included in a post on an obscure publication that Media Bias/Fact Check rates as an “extreme right Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy website based on the promotion of unproven/debunked claims.”
“I’m excited to be in Utah to help Jason Preston, who is a patriot that will take on the establishment and not bow down to the deranged mainstream media jackals,” Stone was quoted as saying.
The Preston campaign memo lists a cost of $19,000, plus a $2,500 down payment, for the “Campaign M Team.” Their most recent campaign finance disclosure includes a $2,500 payment to Adrianna DiCicco, among the new campaign team members listed in the memo.
Neither Preston nor his campaign team responded to questions about whether Stone, listed as the “strategic advisor” for the campaign, was paid for his endorsement. Questions about who was paying for Stone’s travel to Utah were also unanswered.
Stone said he refused to speak to The Tribune through his publicist, Kristin Davis. She is also known as the “Manhattan Madam” and ran a high-end prostitution ring in New York City.
Hiring Stone to play such a prominent role in his campaign is a curious decision for Preston. Stone has been hostile to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout his career, mocking their religious beliefs and making vulgar insults.
During Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Stone attacked Romney’s religious beliefs and suggested he was a polygamist. When Democrat Barack Obama defeated Romney, Stone posted on his now-suspended Twitter account, “At least we don’t have to all become mormons (sic).”
This week it was revealed Jason Sullivan, a one-time aide to Stone, urged supporters of former President Donald Trump to “descend on the Capitol” during a phone call in the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection. Sullivan also promised Trump was prepared to enact a kind of martial law and would not leave office.
“Biden will never be in that White House. That’s my promise to each and every one of you,” Sullivan says in a recording published by The New York Times.
Stone has come under intense scrutiny for his role in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He was a member of Trump’s inner circle who met at the Willard Hotel before the riot. Stone repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment when he was questioned by the House committee investigating the events of that day.
Most recently, Stone called the Jan. 6 investigation a “fraud” during a right-wing event in Tennessee and said the only two political parties in America were “patriots and traitors.”