Roger Stone admitted to spreading lies on InfoWars and will apologize for his conduct on his social media platforms and in several national newspapers, according to the terms of the settlement with Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui.
“Roger Stone retracts and apologizes for statements he made regarding Guo Wengui,” Stone said in a statement that included a list of falsehood he admitted to spreading. “Recognizing my errors, I reached out to Mr. Guo and asked him to settle his defamation lawsuit against me. Mr. Guo graciously agreed to accept my regrets and apology.”
Among the false statements were claims that Guo had been found guilty of financial crimes in the United States and has violated U.S. election law by making donations Hillary Clinton and even a nascent presidential campaign for Steve Bannon — who Guo is known to be close to.
The story was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which also revealed that they would be one of the three newspapers Stone would need to run a public apology in. His mea culpa will also be printed in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Stone, a longtime Trump consigliere, has been associated with the billionaire since the 1980s and was a semi-official fixture of his 2016 run for president. Lately, Stone has found himself in the crosshairs of the Mueller investigation of the Trump presidential campaign and rumors of an impending indictment have percolated for months.
Since Trump took office, Stone has become a regular guest on Alex Jones’ conspiracy-minded radio show InfoWars, where he floated the claims about Guo that he was ultimately forced to apologize for. Stone’s predicament is a familiar on the InfoWars set, as Jones himself has more than once been forced to walk back his statements under threat of legal consequences.
In May 2017, Jones apologized to yogurt giant Chobani after saying one of their plants in Twins Falls, Idaho — which employs refugees — had been involved in child sexual assault and a tuberculosis spike. Just months earlier, he also apologized spreading the infamous Pizzagate conspiracy, which asserted that a child pedophile ring connected to Hillary Clinton was secretly operating in the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant.
As I indicated in my settlement agreement I made the terrible mistake of relying on the representations of Sam Nunberg in my reporting on Mr.Kwok,” Stone told TheWrap. I have retracted one story out of the hundreds I have reported in the two years I have worked as a correspondent at InfoWars. To be clear the WSJ and the AP misreported my statement. I never said my reporting for InfoWars was ‘irresponsible.’”