Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidant and Republican lobbyist who is very much the focus of Robert Mueller’s probe into whether or not Trump colluded with Russia, has admitted to spreading lies on InfoWars and has agreed to apologize immediately for the same, according to the Washington Post .
Stone has been struck with a $100 million defamation suit by Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, who is a vocal critic of Beijing. As part of the settlement, Stone, who admitted to spreading lies on the far-right website InfoWars, has also agreed to run apologies in national newspapers including The Wall Street Journal. He will only be made exempt from paying the damages if he also publishes a retraction of the false statements on social media, which he has agreed to do as well.
Although the matter on which Stone lied about is different from what he is under investigation for — that of him being a mediator between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks — him admitting that he went to the far-right website InfoWars to peddle lies will probably go some way in diminishing his credibility even among Trump supporters. The revelations show that Stone lied repeatedly without worrying about the repercussions and did so with full knowledge that what he was saying and publishing was indeed false. It will now likely tarnish his reputation as a big-time Republican lobbyist among lawmakers working on Capitol Hill.
And if Alex Jones and his conspiracy-theory-promoting website InfoWars was not in enough trouble already with major social media platforms all banning him earlier this year, this would be another blow for the kind of “journalism” Jones and his coterie espouse.
JUST IN: Roger Stone admits to publishing false statements on InfoWars in settlement https://t.co/WBJLrraMAl pic.twitter.com/TrCGoCgjsR
— The Hill (@thehill) December 18, 2018
According to the defamation suit, Stone made statements claiming that Chinese businessman Guo Wengui was a “turncoat criminal who is convicted of crimes here and in China,”– a statement which is patently false. Stone went on to claim that Wengui was a Hillary Clinton supporter who had donated to her campaign on InfoWars, which is also not true. In fact, it appears that the Chinese-American media tycoon Bruno Wu paid Stone to make statements against Wengui, implying that Stone can be manipulated to speak for anyone as long as his coffers are filled.
Also, while the news of Roger Stone admitting to spreading lies so blatantly won’t concern special counsel Robert Mueller directly, it will give him enough reason not to trust Stone’s statements regarding his involvement in helping WikiLeaks publish the DNC hacked emails. Stone’s confessions might also trouble Trump who is known to be a keen admirer of his antics.
