The Club · Investigation · 1972–2021
Roger Stone: the method made flesh.
One career from the dirty tricks of Nixon '72 to the rally the day before Jan 6 — carried by a man with Nixon's face tattooed on his back.
FACT
§2 · Thesis
Stone is the living demonstration of the Roy Cohn method: favors as currency, attack as reflex, the line between campaign, lobby, and dirty trick erased on purpose.
Strong documented spine; we separate the court record from the legend he sells, and grade Jan 6 down where the proof stops.
§5 · Graded Claim
He learned the operating system directly from Roy Cohn (1979) — and carried it for 50 years.
FACT
Met Cohn in 1979, calls him his most important mentor across four decades of interviews. Took the favor-bank playbook: cultivate leverage, never apologize, counter-attack disproportionately. See The Roy Cohn Method.
§5 · Graded Claim
Black, Manafort & Stone fused lobbying and campaigns — and repped dictators (the 'Torturers' Lobby').
FACT
Co-founded 1980 with Charlie Black and Paul Manafort; foreign clients included Marcos (Philippines), Mobutu (Zaire), Savimbi (Angola), later Yanukovych (Ukraine — the work that convicted Manafort). The Cohn favor bank ported into consulting (Center for Public Integrity; Foer).
§5 · Graded Claim
Convicted of seven felonies in 2019 for obstructing the Russia inquiry to protect Trump — then pardoned, never served a day.
FACT
Nov 15, 2019: guilty on all 7 counts (1 obstruction, 5 false statements, 1 witness tampering re: the House Russia probe); sentenced to 40 months. Trump commuted it July 2020 and granted a full pardon Dec 2020 (DOJ; NYT). The favor bank's clearest modern settlement.
§6 · Record vs Narrative
Record vs. legend.
FACT (court/public record)
- 7-count 2019 conviction; 40-month sentence.
- Cohn mentorship; the Torturers' Lobby.
- Trump commutation + full pardon.
SOME SMOKE / his own myth
- A directing role in the Jan 6 breach — unproven; he denies it.
- His boasts of being history's hidden hand.
- 'Advance knowledge' of WikiLeaks — bounded by the trial record.
Declassified
Honest limits: Jan 6 association is documented (Stop-the-Steal, Oath Keeper/Proud Boy guards later convicted of sedition), but a directing role is not established — and a pardon erases the sentence, not the jury's verdict.
§7 · Why it matters now
The operating system outlives the operator.
The techniques Cohn systematized in a Manhattan townhouse didn't die with him in 1986 — a protégé carried them into presidential campaigns, foreign dictatorships, and an attempt to overturn an election. Stone is what the method looks like running, in the open, for fifty years: convicted, pardoned, still working.
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▦ Ledger gaps
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenStone's precise role, if any, in coordinating the Jan 6 breach — documented associations, unproven direction.
- OpenWhat he actually knew about the WikiLeaks releases and when — bounded, but not fully resolved, by the trial record.
Help fill these →