ROGER STONE is, in a word, a character. He dresses like a DC Comics supervillain. He has a tattoo of Richard Nixon between his shoulderblades. He has unorthodox sexual proclivities. He is engaging and glib when he appears on talk shows. He is a ratfucker, a master practitioner of the political dark arts: a dirty trickster, the Loki of the right.
He will do, and has done, almost anything that pops into his twisted mind to win his candidate an election—other than, you know, endorse a non-shit candidate and run an honest campaign. Court orders don’t silence him. Politesse doesn’t constrain him. Looming incarceration hasn’t slowed him down. He is the raging id of the Republican party, and if Jerry Nadler or Richard Neal had one thimbleful of his cornered-rat quintessence, Trump would be long gone.

For almost half a century, Stone has operated in the shadows of Republican power, like Jack the Ripper. He’s had an outsized, and adverse, impact on the history of our country. As my friend Mr. Robinson put it:

During his long and nasty career, he’s rubbed elbows with almost everyone. Let’s take a look at some of the more notable names:

Jeb Stuart Magruder
While an undergraduate at George Washington University, Stone was hired by Jeb Stuart Magruder, who was the deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, known by the most appropriate acronym of all time, CREEP. He has likely embellished the dirty tricks he plied for the Nixon campaign, but if the goal is to immerse yourself in the dark arts, what better supervisor than one of the architects of Watergate? Stone used this apprenticeship as a springboard to curry favor with…

Richard Nixon
After the president resigned in disgrace, Stone cultivated a friendship with Tricky Dick, whom he’d first met in 1967. He considered himself “the keeper of the [Nixon] flame,” which I guess explains the ink he got 40 years after that first introduction. Stone also did campaign work for…

Bob Dole
…one of our dirtier Republicans, and ran the gubernatorial campaigns of…

Thomas Kean
…the governor of New Jersey, who later served as the chair of the 9/11 Commission. Stone also played a key role in the 1980 campaign of…

Ronald Reagan
A dirty trick Stone pulled to benefit The Gipper was to convince the head of the Liberal Party of New York to put endorse John Anderson on the ballot in the ’80 election, in order to split the opposition vote in that delegate-rich state. This he did by delivering a suitcase of (presumably) cash to a key Liberal Party insider. Stone did not devise this himself, but rather did as he was instructed by his GOP Sith Lord…

Roy Cohn
…the hateful lawyer to the scumbag stars, attack dog, political operative, and all-around hideous human being. It is from Cohn, presumably, that Stone learned his political philosophy: “Attack, attack, attack—never defend,” and, “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.” While working on the Reagan campaign, Stone met another amoral arriviste…

Paul Manafort
By 1980, the Count, as he was once known, already had a brokered GOP convention under his belt, but his ambitions stretched far beyond the territorial United States. With Charlie Black, the two of them formed a consulting firm, Black, Manafort & Stone, that was a pioneer in lobbying for foreign governments. Manafort would wind up in Ukraine, which led to a prominent role in the Trump campaign, which led to a prison sentence. Among their corporate clients were brutal dictators of African nations like Somalia, Zaire, and Angola, as well as…

Ferdinand Marcos
…the corrupt Philippines strongman, whose name seems to pop up a lot lately in connection with Iran-Contra and the Epstein money trail.

Lee Atwater
Black, Manafort & Stone became Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (BMSK), and that firm employed the services of one Lee Atwater, the mastermind of Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” which stoked white fear of Black civil rights to turn the South Republican. Another Stone associate in the 1980s was…

Donald John Trump
…who hired Stone to run his exploratory campaign for president upon Trump’s triumphant return from Moscow in 1987. The two Roy Cohn disciples have been BFFs ever since. Stone spent much of the 1990s doing lobbying work for Trump regarding his casino business. In 2000, he ran Trump’s Reform Party presidential campaign. (In between, Stone had to resign from his role on the Dole campaign when he was busted posting ads on kink websites, seeking sexual partners for he and his second wife; was it the ever-projecting Stone who decided to use the word “cuck” to hurl at Trump’s enemies in 2016?). While lobbying in New York, Stone made the acquaintance of…

Joseph Bruno
…the Upstate Republican, longtime Majority Leader of the New York State Senate, and poster boy for crooked Albany politics, who was eventually indicted on corruption charges and convicted. Stone served as Bruno’s political adviser. Another of Stone’s clients in the Albany area was…

Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM
The supposed mega-genius and cult leader was convicted last year of sex trafficking. NXIVM purchased enormous political influence in local politics, and was notoriously litigious—the cult certainly adhered to Stone’s “attack, attack, attack” mantra. Stone recommended that the group hire his buddy, Frank Parlato—who, after being screwed out of a promised payday by Raniere, made it his mission to expose NXIVM and bring it down.