Bush , [ 7 ] and Trump. In addition to frequently serving as a campaign adviser, Stone was a political lobbyist. In , he co-founded a Washington, D. Black Jr. By , it was one of the leading lobbyists for American companies and foreign organizations. Stone first suggested Trump run for president in early while he was Trump's casino business lobbyist in Washington.
In , two associates of Stone alleged that Stone claimed to have had contact with Julian Assange during the presidential campaign. In response, Assange told The Washington Post that he had not met with Stone in the spring of and WikiLeaks said it had had no contact with Stone. Stone said he could recall only one occasion on which he mentioned meeting with Assange, and said that mention was made as a joke. On January 25, , Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida , home in connection with Robert Mueller 's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding , and five counts of making false statements.
Stone was a well driller [ 36 ] and sometime chief of the Vista volunteer Fire Department. He has described his family as middle-class , blue-collar Catholics. Stone said that as an elementary school student during the presidential election , he broke into politics to further John F.
Kennedy 's presidential campaign : "I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays It was my first political trick. When he was a junior and vice president of student government at John Jay High School in northern Westchester County, New York , [ 39 ] he manipulated the ouster of the student government president and succeeded him.
Stone recalled how he ran for election as president for his senior year: "I built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket. Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school to run against me. You think that's mean? No, it's smart. Given a copy of Barry Goldwater 's The Conscience of a Conservative , Stone became drawn to conservatism as a child and a volunteer in Goldwater's campaign. In , Stone indicated he was a staunch conservative but with libertarian leanings. Stone's political career began in earnest on the Nixon campaign, with activities such as contributing money to a possible rival of Nixon in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance and then slipping the receipt to the Manchester Union-Leader.
