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Former political adviser to the Trump campaign, Roger Stone replied “karma is ab ****” when asked about his reaction to the arrest of Steve Bannon.
Stone, a veteran Republican operative who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, served as an adviser to Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign. He is accused of collaborating with WikiLeaks to discredit Hillary Clinton in the run-up to those elections.
In November 2019, following Robert Mueller’s investigation into the involvement of the Trump campaign in Russia hacking the 2016 elections, Stone was indicted by seven counts, including witnesses alleged and lying to federal investigators.
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He was convicted and sentenced to 40 months in federal prison, but on July 10, 2020, Mr. Trump suspended Stone’s sentence after publicly pleading for him to do so.
Bannon, who earlier in 2016 served as president of the presidential campaign, was charged along with two others on Thursday with allegations of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the “We Build the Wall” online fundraising campaign to the organization’s founder Brian Kolfage, who was also charged.
“We Build the Wall” began in 2018 as a GoFundMe campaign, and was created to help raise money from public funding to go directly to the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall at a time when the president was struggling with pushback from Congress.
In a press release, Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “As alleged, the suspects defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, and capitalized on their interest in financing a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all that money would be spent on construction. . ”
After Bannon was arrested, New York Magazine asked Stone his thoughts, to which he replied, ‘Karma is ab ****. But I pray for him. ”
Bannon, who worked with Stone during the 2016 election, testified during the former adviser’s trial in November 2019, and contradicted his testimony regarding WikiLeaks.
Stone had declined to comment to WikiLeaks on the inquiry and to Congress before releasing the group’s emails from Ms Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
However, Bannon said during his testimony: “He had an affair, or told me he had an affair with WikiLeaks,” adding, “I was believed to have an affair with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.”
In response to the arrests on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a statement in which she tried to distance the president from the campaign and Bannon.
“As everyone knows, President Trump has no involvement in this project and felt that it was only done to showboat, and maybe raise money,” she said.
A White House statement read: “President Trump has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the administration, and he does not know the people involved in this project.”
However, Trump told alliance Kris Kobach of the New York Times last year he talked to Mr. Trump about the project, adding that “the president said ‘the project has my blessing, and you can tell the media that.'”
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