Yesterday, Mediaite reported that it obtained a tape of longtime Republican operative and Trump advisor Roger Stone discussing assassinating two Democratic House representatives.
Today, Stone called the story fake and claimed that if any recording ever did exist, they were generated by artificial intelligence.
“EXCLUSIVE- LEFT WING MEDIAITE FAILS TO PRODUCE OR POST AUDIO OF TAPE WHERE THEY ALLEGE FALSELY THAT I PLOTTED TO ASSASSINATE POLITICAL OPPONENTS BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST -OR CAN’T PASS ANALYSIS FOR AUTHENTICITY ( AI),” Stone posted on Tuesday. “#FakeNews.”
According to the initial Mediaite story, Stone and Sal Greco, an ex-NYPD cop reportedly fired for his friendship with Stone over rules on associating with convicted criminals, discussed the plot at a restaurant in Florida before the 2020 election.
Stone was under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee at the time over former President Donald Trump’s commuting of Stone’s prison sentence for obstructing and lying under oath to the House Intelligence Committee over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And it appears he was sick of it.
“It’s time to do it. Let’s go find Swalwell,” Mediaite reported Stone saying of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). “It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either [Rep. Jerry] Nadler (D-N.Y.) or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit anymore.”
Mediaite reported last week that Stone, in December 2020, also spoke with Greco over the need to “abduct and punish” Aaron Zelinsky, a Justice Department prosecutor who’d asked for a nine-year sentence for Stone, then resigned after he claimed Trump put pressure on the DOJ to reduce Stone’s punishment.
“He needs to be punished,” Mediaite quoted Stone as saying. “You have to abduct him and punish him. That has to be done. It will be easy to abduct him because he is a weakling.”
Stone denied that the comments were real in a statement to Mediaite, saying that he’d “never said anything of the kind, more AI manipulation. You asked me to respond to audios that you don’t let me hear and you don’t identify a source for.”
Stone doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on X, posting multiple times about the story on Tuesday.
“I never planned or threatened to have any politician assassinated. This is another fake news hoax without evidence,” Stone wrote in one tweet.
“Trump hating MEDIATE says they have a 4 year old taped conversation in which they allege I threaten to kill two politicians- WHY DON’T THEY POST OR PRODUCE THE TAPE ? NEVER HAPPENED,” Stone wrote in another post.
Stone has been on the offensive against the Mediaite stories, replying to Mediatite’s editor-in-chief’s post about the Zelinsky story last Friday, saying that it was: “False. An AI generated voice track, which is going to get @dianafalzone and others sued. See you all in court.”
Diana Falzone, who wrote both of the stories, quickly retweeted the post by Stone, as well as others of him raging against the articles.
Stone didn’t respond to questions from the Daily Dot about the authenticity of the recordings. Falzone didn’t respond to questions about Stone’s AI accusations or a request from the Daily Dot to listen to the recordings.
