March 16, 2017


Political adviser Roger Stone. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Longtime friend of President Trump and informal adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. said he was a passenger in a vehicle struck Wednesday in a hit-and-run collision in Pompano Beach, Fla.

Stone, no stranger to conspiracy theories over the many years of his political career, which dates to the Nixon era, told The Washington Post via email that “it is possible that this was deliberate.” He noted the vehicle’s dark windshield, possibly fake tag number and the speed with which the driver fled the crash scene.

“The car I was riding in was hit broadside at the front passenger side door,” said Stone, a Republican operative with former president Richard Nixon’s face tattooed on his upper back. “I was in the front passenger seat. The air bags deployed to my right and front. The driver who hit us backed up, shifted gears and took off.”

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office did not respond immediately to The Washington Post’s request for comment late Wednesday. CBS4 Miami confirmed with the local authorities that a hit-and-run vehicle accident occurred at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday at the intersection that Stone had described.

The sheriff’s report, according to CBS4 News, states that “a deputy was not dispatched to the accident until 11:56 a.m. — more than 70 minutes after the crash. The deputy arrived on the scene at 11:59 a.m. The report makes no mention of Stone being a passenger in the vehicle.” Stone said that he waited 30 minutes, but when authorities failed to arrive, he left via Uber.

The driver of the struck vehicle, John Kakanis, confirmed to CBS4 that Stone was in the passenger’s seat. A witness, Ron Snowden, also told the Miami news station that he saw a man who resembled Stone at the scene.

Stone said in a Twitter post that he was “fine,” other than blurred vision in his right eye, which he said was previously injured in a boxing match.

Stone told The Post that his suspicions were also aroused because the hit-and-run occurred on the same day that “the ranking Democrat called for me to testify before an inquiry into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.” The House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), said he was alarmed by Stone’s Twitter correspondence with hacker Guccifer 2.0, CNN reported Wednesday.

The person or people behind Guccifer 2.0 have claimed responsibility for stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee, which WikiLeaks released during the summer. After the release, U.S. intelligence officials expressed “high confidence” that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian military agent.

Stone, who recently admitted to corresponding with Guccifer 2.o via private Twitter messages, denied any complicity.

“Many fake news outlets are claiming I colluded with Guccifer 2.0 via Twitter to hack and disseminate the DNC documents in July,” Stone said in his email to The Post. “The proof they offer is our exchange on Twitter,” he said, but noted that the correspondence was dated August 14,  “almost five weeks after the hack and release of the DNC documents.”

An ongoing counterintelligence investigation has probed possible Russian links to Stone as well as Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Carter Page, the New York Times reported Jan. 19.

“There remains no proof of anyone involved in the Trump campaign having colluded with any Russians,” Stone told The Post.

Wednesday’s crash marked the second time in recent months that Stone said his life was threatened. Stone claimed that, in late 2016, he was poisoned with polonium, the radioactive material used to kill former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.