Roger Stone After the Fall: Trump, Indian Casinos, and the 2000 Election (1996–2000)
This article covers the period immediately following the 1996 “swinger” sex scandal that exiled Roger Stone from mainstream Republican politics, though by no means reduced his insidious influence. It is the third article in a continuing series about Stone. While it is not necessary to read the earlier entries, it is encouraged.
The first article covers Stone’s involvement in Watergate through to the Reagan campaign, which brought him into contact with Roy Cohn and Donald Trump.
The second article covers Stone’s work on the controversial 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial campaign and his lobbying for Trump in Atlantic City.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
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In the year 2000, a small Indian tribe known as the St. Regis Mohawks located in Franklin County, New York were planning on opening a casino at the Monticello horse track in the Catskills. The tribe and its plans, however, were opposed by the hitherto unknown New York Institute for Law and Society (NYILS).
The ostensibly grassroots, anti-gambling group supported by 12,000 donors attacked the tribe’s planned casino development with hard hitting ad buys.
“Casino gambling stinks,” one of the local advertisements read. “It brings increased crime, bankruptcy, broken homes, divorce and, in the case of Indian gambling, violence.”
The truth, however, was that the New York Institute for Law and Society was not a grassroots organization, nor was it funded by 12,000 grassroots donors. It was the brainchild of Republican political operative Roger Stone and was funded by his top client, Donald J. Trump.
At some point in the 1990s, Stone left the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, and Stone, which was acquired by the PR company Burson-Marsteller in 1991, and founded his own Ikon Public Affairs, which was behind the effort. The “Institute” was headed by Thomas Hunter, an acquaintance who Stone had met during the 1980 Reagan campaign.
Trump personally signed off on Stone’s various attack lines. “Roger — do it, Donald,” Trump wrote on a memo containing Stone’s attack lines.
After a Supreme Court decision paved the way to allow for gambling on Native American reservations, Ronald Reagan signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act during the last days of his final term in 1988. The timing was terrible for Trump, whose real estate and casino empire was already teetering under the weight of a mountain of debt. His three casinos on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk were already cannibalizing each others business, and the prospect of additional competition was unwelcome, indeed.
In 1992, a year after the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City had declared bankruptcy, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation partnered with the Malaysian gambling concern Genting and opened the Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Connecticut, at the time the largest casino in the Western hemisphere.
The competition posed a direct threat to Trump’s ailing Atlantic City casinos, prompting him to file a lawsuit against the Federal Government claiming it was discriminating against him. “I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations,” Trump told shock jock radio host Don Imus at the time.
Trump called upon his favorite lobbyist for assistance: Roger Stone. Stone accompanied Trump to Washington, DC in 1993 where he testified before a Congressional committee looking into Indian gaming. In addition to claiming that the Mashantucket Pequot’s didn’t “look Indian,” Trump leveled accusations of the the presence of organized crime on Indian reservations.
“Organized crime is rampant, is rampant — I don’t mean a little bit — is rampant on the Indian reservations,” Trump stated before Congress. “It will blow sky high. It will be the biggest scandal ever or one of the biggest scandals since Al Capone in terms of organized crime.”
When Trump’s appearance before Congress failed to defeat Indian gaming, he had Stone pursue more underhanded methods, hence the birth of the so-called New York Institute for Law and Society. Stone’s dishonest media campaign gained the attention of New York’s Temporary Commission on Lobbying. The Commission found that Trump and Stone’s secret attacks against the St. Regis Mohawks violated state law.
In a subsequent settlement, Trump was fined $250,000, the largest fine ever levied by the Commission, and Stone was fined $100,000. The negotiated settlement included the issuance of a rare public apology from Trump
The fine infuriated Stone, and whetted his appetite for revenge against Governor Pataki, who he ultimately held responsible for the actions of the Commission. Stone’s first opportunity came later that year during the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
At the time, Bush was considering Pataki as a potential running mate. Trump and Stone responded by running ads in New Hampshire, Texas, and South Carolina urging Bush to steer clear of Pataki, who they accused of supporting Indian gambling.
It was only the beginning of Stone’s campaign of retaliation against the Governor of New York.
ROGER STONE AND THE 2000 ELECTION: STUNT CANDIDACIES AND THE BROOKS BROTHERS RIOT
In the aftermath of Roger Stone’s very public exile from mainstream Republican politics following a tabloid sex scandal that prompted his resignation from the 1996 Dole campaign, Stone moved to Florida and found himself occupying more obscure corners of American politics. However, just because Stone was lurking in the shadows didn’t mean his influence wasn’t felt. Stone was highly active in the lead-up to, during, and immediately after the 2000 election. His first target of opportunity was the Reform Party.
Many Republicans ascribe Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory over George H.W. Bush to the presence of third party candidate Ross Perot. The Texan billionaire received 18.5% of the vote which drew inordinately from Republicans. Encouraged by his showing, in 1995 Perot established the Reform Party of the United States, and garnered 8.5% in the 1996 election.
By the time the 2000 election rolled around, advisors around Republican candidate George W. Bush were concerned that another Reform Party candidate could rise and again threaten his chances of defeating Democrat Al Gore.
Enter Roger Stone.
Stone played a key role in encouraging “paleoconservative” and former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan to run as a third party candidate, before intentionally sabotaging his campaign in an effort to destroy to Reform Party and benefit Bush’s election prospects.
In June of 1999, Stone attended a lunch at The Palm restaurant in Washington, D.C. with Bay Buchanan, Pat’s sister and campaign manager, and Buchanan political aid Lyn Nofziger. Nofziger told reporter Wayne Barrett that having Pat Buchanan run on the Reform Party ticket was Stone’s idea, who argued that if he did so he would receive up to $13 million in automatic federal matching funds.
Stone’s partner in Ikon Public Affairs, the PR company he used during his anti-St. Regis Mohawk campaign for Trump, William Von Raab, had served as the co-finance chair of Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign.
After a poor showing by Buchanan in the Republican primary, Stone hired the pollster Robert Schroth to conduct polls on Buchanan’s viability as a Reform Party candidate. The results appeared encouraging. Stone disseminated the results to the press.
At the same time Stone was encouraging Buchanan to run under the Reform Party banner, he was simultaneously undercutting his campaign in two fundamental ways. First, he was peddling a rumor that Buchanan had fathered an illegitimate child as a Georgetown undergrad. While the rumor had been in circulation for years, during the 2000 cycle it was given new life when it was alleged that Buchanan had paid the mother to kill the story.
One man who pursued the illegitimate child story, and who refused to answer any of Wayne Barrett’s questions regarding Roger Stone’s role in guiding his reporting, was an Associated Press reporter named John Solomon.
Nearly three decades later, Solomon would come under severe criticism for his reporting in The Hill that smeared the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanavitch, and peddling the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was behind the the interference in the 2016 election as opposed to Russia. The New York Times later described Solomon as “The Man Trump Trusts for News on Ukraine.”
Another individual who told Barrett that Stone had paid her to spread the illegitimate child story was the consultant Mattie Lolavar. Lolavar was later involved in a lawsuit involving Roger Stone, Ikon Public Affairs and Dick Morris, a political advisor once close to Bill Clinton who had his own sexual scandal in 1996 at roughly the same time Roger Stone experienced his.
According to Lolavar, she signed two contracts with Ikon. The first was on May 31st, 2000, and was connected to Argentinian President Fernando de la Rua’s visit to the United States. The second contract was to serve as a public relations agent for Fernando de Santibañes, the Secretary of Intelligence for Argentina.
Lolavar had a falling out with Stone and his partners at Ikon when they asked her to act as an intermediary in an anonymous wire transfer of funds to an official in Israel. The payment was to secure intelligence files from the Israeli government to assist in Argentine presidents de la Rua’s dispute with his chief domestic political opponent, Dr. Carlos Menem. The documents, which Lolavar was to doctor to make look like they had come from Argentinian intelligence, were to allege a corrupt relationship between Menem and George W. Bush.
Stone and his partners grew worried that the plot would be linked back to them. They told Lolavar to find a way to blame the Gore campaign. Lolavar refused, and legal proceedings ensued.
This strange episode is worth mentioning because it indicates that Stone had apparent links to Israeli officials with intelligence connections as far back as 2000.
During the 2016 election, Stone had mysterious contacts with an Israeli official whose name was redacted in FBI documents, a story which will be related in a later article.
Returning to the 2000 election, Stone had another card up his sleeve to derail to Pat Buchanan and the Reform Party: Donald J. Trump.
Despite registering as a Republican in 1987, Trump was not a doctrinaire conservative. In 1997, he described Bill Clinton as “terrific” on the CNN. When Trump decided to flirt with a presidential run in 2000, it wasn’t as a Republican but as the potential standard bearer for the Reform Party.
It is no accident that at the same time Stone was encouraging Buchanan to enter the race under the Reform Party, he was doing the same thing with Trump.
Trump had been toying with the idea of running in the 2000 election as far back as 1998, when he asked Stone to “find the most eminent hack writer in America” to ghostwrite a book for him. Trump had several advantages going into 2000. Chief among them was his celebrity and name recognition. He was possessed a 6.5 million strong mailing list.
On October 7th, 1999, Trump met with the newly elected Governor of Minnesota, a former professional wrestler named Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who had won an upset victory under the Reform Party banner to become the Governor of Minnesota.
Trump and Ventura had first met in 1988 at Wrestlemania IV in Atlantic City. Both wanted to deny Buchanan a place atop the Reform Party ticket. Trump and Stone had paid close attention to Ventura’s candidacy in Minnesota and saw and opening for unorthodox, populist candidates.
A day after their meeting in Manhattan, on October 8th, 1999, Trump announced on CNN’s Larry King Live that he was leaving the Republican Party for the Reform Party and was forming an exploratory committee to run for president. When asked about a running mate, Trump floated Oprah Winfrey.
“Donald positioned himself essentially as a fiscal conservative but more of a social progressive,” Roger Stone later told New York Magazine, “which fit the Reform Party closely.”
Trump also began to aggressively attack Pat Buchanan, no doubt according to Stone’s plans. J., the Jewish News of Northern California, published an op-ed by Trump attacking Buchanan for his views on Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Trump told the gay-oriented news magazine The Advocate that he didn’t like how Buchanan talked about “Jews, blacks, gays, and Mexicans,” and that as President he would extend the Civil Rights Act to include gay people and allow them to serve in the military, then-banned under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
As a “libertarian” Republican, Stone claims he supports gay rights. Years later, Trump famously opened his 2016 campaign by referring to Mexicans as “rapists.”
On the first day of his campaign Trump visited Miami. Speaking before a group of Cuban-Americans, he vowed to keep the U.S. Embargo in place and claimed he would refuse to do business in Cuba as long as Fidel Castro was in power.
What he didn’t tell the assembled crowd was that only months earlier Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts had in fact attempted to do business in Cuba, spending $68k on a company visit to the Communist island at a time when such corporate expenditures in the Communist country were illegal without U.S. Government approval.
As he thrust the Reform Party into chaos, Trump went onto Meet the Press and told host Tim Russert that he supported partial-birth abortion. After the show, Stone claimed that Trump admitted to him that he didn’t know what partial birth abortion was. Trump later came out against the procedure. Trump further proposed a one time 14.5% tax on the rich to pay off the National Debt and to stabilize social security.
As part of his faux presidential run, Trump filmed an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno accompanied by Stone.
“Hey Donald,” the Leno cracked upon seeing Stone, “you brought your bookie.”
On January 1st, 2000, Trump released his ghost-written book The America We Deserve. In it, Trump praised Jimmy Hoffa Jr., then-leader of the Teamsters, as well as the labor unions. On January 5th, Trump held a press conference at Trump Tower to promote the book.
Despite the fanfare, Trump announced in a February 19th Op-Ed in The New York Times that he wouldn’t be running for president in the 2000 election.
Rumors of out-of-wedlock children and Trump’s brief candidacy had served Stone’s purposes well, damaging the Reform Party’s lead contender beyond repair. When Buchanan came close to sealing the Reform Party’s candidacy, Governor Jesse Ventura pulled the support of the Minnesota branch of the party. The Reform Party, once a meaningful presence on the ballot, was now a national joke. Supporters of George W. Bush could rest assured that there would be no repeat of 1992.
Roger Stone’s involvement in the 2000 election, however, was far from over.
The general election between Bush and Democrat Vice President Al Gore ultimately came down to the state of Florida. On election night, the networks initially called the state for Gore, before stating that the race was “too close to call,” and finally calling the state instead for Bush, who led on election night by a razor thin 1,784 votes. An automatic recount followed, reducing Bush’s lead to 900 votes. The issue was turned over to the courts to decide, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before the Supreme Court’s infamous Bush v. Gore ruling, Stone engaged in an illegal effort to pressure judges on the Florida Supreme Court. In the chaotic days following the election, Stone and his firm Ikon Public Affairs secretly established the “Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary,” fronted by a sitting Palm Beach commissioner and former chair of the Palm Beach Country Republican Party named Mary McCarty. Stone’s “Committee” received a $150,000 loan, the source of which remains unknown.
It was later determined that McCarty violated state campaign finance laws.
“This was an attempt to let the justices know, who were going to eventually decide the presidential election, that they were going to be watched,” assistant counsel of the Florida Election Commission Eric M. Lipman testified before the Commission in 2003. “And it was an attempt to influence what they were going to do.”
Years later, McCarty received a presidential pardon alongside Stone during the final days of the Trump presidency for a crime unrelated to her 2000 election activities. In 2009, she was convicted of honest services fraud for illegally steering bond underwriting business to her husband and accepting gifts while Palm Beach Commissioner. McCarty is the sister of lobbyist Brian Ballard, a top Trump fundraiser.
Another individual involved in the “Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary,” who will pop up again several times in various Roger Stone ventures, is Dianne Thorne of Miami Beach. Thorne, who reportedly once dated Stone’s son, was hired as the Treasurer of the Committee. Thorne testified that Stone approached her to manage clerical matters for the operation.
Despite Stone and McCarty’s illegal efforts, on November 21st, 2000, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that that the deadline for manual recounts would be extended to November 26th, providing an important victory for the Gore campaign. The recount process in Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest country, was taking place in the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, an office building in downtown Miami.
“The whole idea behind what they were doing was that there had already been one recount of the votes, so we didn’t want another,” Stone told The New Yorker. “The idea was to shut it down, stop the recount here in Miami.”
Republican luminary James Baker III had been placed in charge of managing the volatile situation in Florida for the Bush campaign. According to Stone, Baker called in the favor Stone owed him dating back to getting Ronald Reagan to endorse New Jersey candidate Thomas Kean 19 years earlier during the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign, which itself was decided by less than 2,000 votes.
“Get me Roger Stone,” Baker reportedly ordered, a phrase that Stone has celebrated and promoted ever since.
Several thousand pro-Bush protestors gathered in front of the Clark government center insisting that he recount be stopped. Stone established himself in a Winnebago a block away from the Clark Center and was in touch with activists in the building via cell phones and walkie-talkie’s.
On November 22nd, Stone claims he heard that a Gore supporter was attempting to remove 200–300 ballots from the count room. In reality, a Gore supporter named Joe Geller was carrying a single, unmarked sample ballot.
“I said, ‘O.K., follow them,” Stone explained. “Half you guys go on the elevator and half go in the stairs.’ Everyone got sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take the rest of the ballots into a back room with no windows. I told our guys to stop them — don’t let them close the door! They are trying to keep the door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming and yelling.”
A rush of protestors flooded the Stephen P. Clark Government Center and stopped the recount, which was never continued after a Supreme Court decision overruled the Florida Supreme Court and stopped the recount.
As with many elements of Stone’s biography, his exact role in the “Brooks Brothers Riot” has been contested. Many allege that Stone wrote himself into history once again as the villain in order to exaggerate his own infamy and role in political history.
SPOILS OF VICTORY: ROGER STONE, DONALD TRUMP, AND THE INDIAN GAMING SWITCH-A-ROO
As the indefatigable Wayne Barrett reported in The Village Voice, Roger Stone was rewarded for his role in Bush’s victory by being invited to serve on the incoming administrations Department of Interior transition working group. In the capacity, Stone oversaw the staffing of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA determined which tribes received federal recognition, allowing them to open casinos.
By exerting influence over who would control the BIA, Stone’s consulting services became immensely valuable to tribes seeking federal recognition and their often hidden financial backers.
Despite their initial opposition, Stone and Trump had been attempting to cash in on Indian Gaming since 1997. Jeff Benedict, President of the Connecticut Alliance Against Casino Gambling, testified before Congress in 2004 about the subject.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs,” stated Benedict, “the agency with a trust responsibility to aid and look out for the welfare of tribes — has been the enabling partner to the non-Indian financiers and investors that have cashed in on Indian gambling. Initially, casino moguls like Donald Trump attacked the rise of Indian casinos as a fraud. He even testified before the United States Senate and suggested that the Mashantucket Pequots, which operate Foxwoods, the world’s largest casino, may not be true Indians. But Trump and other casino entrepreneurs recognized the writing on the wall and adopted an ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ approach.”
“Instead of railing against Foxwoods and the Mashantucket Pequots who operate it,” Benedict continued, “Trump went out and found another group calling itself Pequots. According to court documents, on March 11, 1997, Trump entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to finance the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation’s bid for federal recognition. The contract between Trump and the Paucatucks states that the two parties would work jointly “to obtain federal recognition for the Paucatucks and to secure the legal rights of the Paucatucks and Trump to operate a tribal gaming facility in the State of Connecticut” that would be managed by Trump. In a five-year-span between 1997 and August 31, 2002, court papers indicate that Trump advanced the Paucatucks $9,192,807.”
Stone also sought a piece of the action. In 2002 he signed a contract with the Buena Vista Rancheria of the We-Muk Indian Tribe, who were seeking to open a casino in California, that included a $250,000 retainer and 7.5% of annual gaming revenue.
Stone distributed a 157-page prospectus advertising his services to tribes seeking Federal recognition that claimed he agreements with four other tribes. The Stone prospectus also contained a personal bio which described his enlistment by James Baker during the Florida recount. This provides yet another example of how Stone exploits his infamy to cash in. Nor was he the only one, Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.
The next article will cover a series of stunt campaigns Roger Stone masterminded in the period following the 2000 election.
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