How to Plan a Coup

On September 10, Trump’s friend and adviser Roger Stone appeared on Infowars, the show run by the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Convicted of lying to Congress and tampering with witnesses before they testified concerning the ties of the 2016 Trump campaign to Russia, Stone publicly asked Trump to commute his sentence and, in exchange, promised to campaign for him.

Stone was a political operative for Richard Nixon—he famously has a picture of Nixon tattooed on his back—and was a business partner of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, now also a convicted felon. Stone calls himself a “rat-f**ker” — a term used by Nixon insiders to describe electoral fraud and dirty tricks — and was an instigator of the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that shut down the recount of ballots in Florida in 2000.

In July, Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence, and now, apparently, Stone is holding up his end of the deal.

Related:

Roger Stone’s dirty tricks helped sway the 2000 Florida recount