Trump Associate Roger Stone Apologizes, Retracts False Statements Made On Conspiracy Site Infowars
Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, has formally apologized for making false statements to the conspiracy theory website Infowars. The statement has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and was also posted on Stone’s social media accounts and website.
“Mr. Stone failed to do proper research before making those statements and improperly relied upon information conveyed to him by others,” one part of the statement reads.
According to CNN, the apology stems from a lawsuit filed by Chinese businessman Guo Wengui. In the defamation suit, Guo claims that Stone told lies to Infowars, saying that he was convicted of financial malfeasance in the United States and that he committed election law crimes by donating to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Stone also said that Guo financially supported the presidential ambitions of former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Roger Stone is currently under investigation for allegedly acting as a middleman between the Trump presidential campaign and Wikileaks. The apology is not related to the investigation in any way, but it further undermines his credibility. As the previous Inquisitr article notes, it looks like a Chinese media mogul may have paid Stone to makes these statements about Guo, which could mean that his word is available to the highest bidder.
Roger Stone’s court ordered ad apologizing for the lies he spread on InfoWars. (Story above?)
Share with everyone pic.twitter.com/5686STfuCt
— Maggie Jordan (reader of banned books) (@MaggieJordanACN) December 26, 2018
According to Fox News, the settlement agreement states that Stone had to make the apology or pay $100 million in damages. Guo has also agreed to abandon the lawsuit after Stone formally apologized and retracted the defamatory statements.
Stone’s apology has also been sent to Infowars, a site run by Alex Jones that has had most of its social media accounts banned for its questionable content. As CNN reports, Jones has had to face his fair share of defamation lawsuits, most notably from families whose loved ones died in the Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones has repeatedly used his Infowars platform to claim that the shooting was a hoax.
Roger Stone and Donald Trump have a long history of working together in various capacities. Vox reports that that Stone and Trump have known each other for three decades. They met through Roy Cohn, a man with a notorious reputation in politics as chief counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy during the McCarthy hearings. Cohn would go on to become Trump’s lawyer. During the ’80s, Trump hired Roger Stone as a lobbyist, and the rest, as they say, is history.
