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- Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser, urged President Trump to declare "martial law" is he loses the election in November.
- In an interview with the far-right Infowars site, Stone called for Trump to form a special task force of federal agents to "physically stand in the way of criminal activity" in the election.
- He repeated Trump's baseless accusations that the election result would be fraudulent, as polls show Democratic candidate Joe Biden maintaining a lead over the president.
- Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering last year in relation to his activities during the 2016 election, but given clemency by Trump.
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Roger Stone, the political "dirty trickster" and former adviser to Donald Trump, has urged the president to seize power should he lose November's election.
In the interview with Jones' far-right conspiracy site Infowars, Stone echoed groundless claims pushed by Trump that the Democratic party would rig the election.
Stone encouraged Trump to consider declaring "martial law" should he lose the election, or invoke the Insurrection Act. Using his new powers, he should arrest of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, "the Clintons," and "anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity," said Stone.
The comments were made by Stone last week, and first reported over the weekend by progressive group MediaMatters.
Stone called for Trump to appoint former Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, as a special counsel "with the specific task of forming an Election Day operation using the FBI, federal marshals, and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity."
He singled out the state of Nevada: "The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!"
Nevada is regarded by pollsters as leaning Democrat and is being targeted by the Trump campaign amid signs that it is becoming more competitive, according to The Cook Political Report.
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He claimed that journalists should be rounded up for "seditious activities" relating to the election, singling out a report by The Daily Beast on left-wing groups discussing what to do in the event of a disputed election in November and violence on the streets.
"They wanna play war, this is war...I'm for a legal election. Everything I'm going to be involved with in terms of helping Donald Trump get elected will be perfectly transparent and legal," remarked Stone.
In the interview, Stone's claims echo Trump's narrative that an expected surge in mail-in votes would lead to widespread voter fraud. Democrats say the president is seeking to erode trust in the election, depress voter turnout, and prepare the ground to delegitimize the election if he loses.
Stone is a veteran Republican strategist and longtime confidante of Trump, who advised him during his 2016 election campaign.
In 2016, he was a frequent guest on Infowars, which traffics in conspiracies that "elites" and "deep state" operatives secretly manipulate world events, and brokered a Trump interview on the site. Jones has since been banned from several social media platforms for promoting hate speech.
Stone was convicted last year of lying to Congress and witness tampering relating to a congressional probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but granted clemency for Trump in July.
Trump had claimed that Stone's trial had been unfair in explaining why he issued the clemency order.
Andrew Weissman, a prosecutor on the Mueller probe, in an op-ed for The New York Times, said that Trump was rewarding Stone for "keeping his lips sealed."
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