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Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone’s links to Capitol rioters were further revealed Saturday with the release of a new video showing him on a rally stage with top members of the extremist Proud Boys. One of them has been accused by the FBI of allegedly planning the deadly storming of the Capitol.
The video was released a day after ABC posted a tape showing Stone with militia members of the extreme right-wing Oath Keepers the morning of the Capitol riot.
The new video was obtained by Just Security, an online forum hosted by the Reiss Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. It shows a happy Stone pressed together on a rally stage in December with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and the group’s “sergeant at arms” Ethan Nordean — also known as Rufio Panman.
“Never give up, never quit, never surrender, and fight for America!” Stone tells a crowd gathered the night before the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington in the video. Nordean’s hand appears to be on Stone’s shoulder as he rails against the results of the presidential election.
Tarrio was apprehended in Washington just two days before the storming of the Capitol on an arrest warrant on charges that he torched a Black Lives Matter banner at a church at an earlier protest. When he was arrested, he was found to be carrying two “high-capacity firearm magazines,” which led to illegal possession charges, according to a statement from the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
The FBI has accused Nordean in an affidavit of allegedly plotting with other Proud Boys to storm the Capitol in a riot that claimed five lives. He was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempting to obstruct Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, The Washington Post noted. Nordean was also charged with aiding and abetting, knowingly entering or remaining in restricted building or grounds, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
Stone has not yet commented on the latest video. He told ABC that the Oath Keepers flanking him the day of the riot were acting as his bodyguards.
In a keynote speech in Freedom Plaza the night before the storming of the Capitol, Stone called the battle against American voters’ choice for president an “epic struggle for the future of this country … between the godly and the godless.”
Stone has been a long-time Trump confidant and a 2016 campaign adviser.
Trump granted clemency to Stone and eventually pardoned him last year after he was convicted of seven felonies, including lying in congressional testimony and witness tampering in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.
Trump’s impeachment trial begins next week on “incitement of insurrection.”
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