Roger Stone may have a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, but the Nixon Foundation is turning its back on Roger Stone.
In his first public appearance after being indicted for lying to federal investigators in the Russia investigation, Stone flashed the double-armed victory sign made famous by Nixon, who used it on numerous occasions including, most memorably, after his resignation from the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
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The former Trump adviser’s admiration for Nixon is literally etched into his skin — he sports a tattoo of Nixon on his upper back (“Women love it,” he told the New Yorker in 2008).
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 23-page indictment reveals that Stone even invoked a famous Watergate-era Nixon quote when messaging his alleged Wikileaks intermediary, radio host Randy Credico, in November 2017.
“Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan… Richard Nixon,” Stone said in his text message to Credico.
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The following month, Credico pleaded the 5th Amendment to evade an interview with the House Intelligence Committee.
Amid renewed interest in Stone’s ties to the Nixon administration, the Nixon Foundation on Friday scrambled to distance itself from Stone, stating that his contributions to the Nixon presidency didn’t extend beyond serving as a junior scheduler during his student days.
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“This morning’s widely-circulated characterization of Roger Stone as a Nixon campaign aide or adviser is a gross misstatement,” the Foundation said in a tweet. “Mr. Stone was 16 years old during the Nixon presidential campaign of 1968 and 20 years old during the reelection campaign of 1972.
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“Mr. Stone, during his time as a student at George Washington University, was a junior scheduler on the Nixon reelection committee. Mr. Stone was not a campaign aide or adviser. Nowhere in the Presidential Daily Diaries from 1972 to 1974 does the name ‘Roger Stone’ appear.”
Indeed, in the 2008 feature in the New Yorker, Stone was accused by a senior Ronald Reagan aide of being a “fringe player” and a “little rat” who exaggerated his closeness to the Nixon administration.
Stone was charged with lying about his efforts to leverage Russian-hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid.
He faces seven criminal counts including witness tampering, lying to Congress about WikiLeaks and obstructing the probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
He said he will plead “not guilty” to the charges.