AP Photo/Evan Vucci
The fake electors memo that former Trump adviser Roger Stone was caught on camera dictating to an assistant in November 2020 was first sent to Michael Flynn, Mediaite has learned.
“Those of us around at the time understood that the memo was being written to General Flynn,” a source told Mediaite. “Roger bragged about trying to get it into the hands of others such as Trump and [Rudy] Guiliani.”
The video of Stone, which was captured by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen for his documentary A Storm Foretold and aired by MSNBC’s Ari Melber this week, shows the Republican political operative on November 5, days before the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, laying out the plan to install fake electors in an effort to steal the election for Trump.
The revelation that Stone was hatching the fake electors plot before the election was even called shows the extent to which the Trump campaign and its allies went to overturn Biden’s victory, a wide-ranging scheme that now lies at the heart of two criminal indictments of the former president.
Stone sought to get his plan as close to Trump as he could, and started with Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who served as national security adviser (briefly) under Trump and later pleaded guilty for making false statements to the FBI as part of the Russia investigation.
By November 2020, Flynn was part of Trump’s inner circle working to overturn the election, according to a source close to the documentary.
He was also one of the more aggressive proponents of the stolen election crusade. In the days, weeks and months that followed the Stone memo, Flynn proposed extreme remedies to Trump’s loss, even proposing in one interview that Trump use the military to “re-run” the election in swing states he lost. His calls for martial law prompted one prominent Republican to call for Flynn to face a court martial for incitement to insurrection — weeks before the Jan. 6 riot.
Flynn did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Roger wrote the memo for Flynn because they both believed that the election was stolen and were angry about it,” a source told Mediaite. “They believed they could change the outcome. They were creating a plan. They spoke regularly on the phone then.”
“Everyone at that time thought the election was stolen,” the source said. “They were trying to figure out what to do. Everyone was angry and calling everyone else trying to figure out what to do. They were coordinating a plan to stop Biden from taking office.”
The video, which was filmed for Guldbrandsen’s A Storm Foretold, a documentary following Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn the election, an effort that culminated in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, shows Stone dictating a plan to an aide.
“Although state officials in all 50 states must ultimately certify the results of the voting in their state,” Stone said, “the final decision as to who the state legislatures authorize be sent to the Electoral College is a decision made solely by the legislature.”
“Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud, to send electors to the Electoral College who accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud,” he added.
Stone, according to the source, took it upon himself to write the memo.
“He hoped to ingratiate himself with Trump,” they explained. A few months earlier, Stone faced 40 months in prison after he was convicted on a slew of charges in the Russia investigation, including lying to Congress and witness tampering. Trump commuted his sentence, but in November 2020, he had yet to receive a full pardon, which Trump granted him before the end of his term.
The scribe typing feverishly in the video of Stone is his associate Enrique Alejandro de la Torre, an associate of Stone who testified before the Jan. 6 committee and pleaded the fifth. De la Torre did not give a comment for this piece.
Another source close to A Storm Foretold told Mediaite that Stone went on to send his memo out to “the 47 members of the F.O.S (Friends of Stone) chat group and candidates for the Stop the Steal committee.” The encrypted group chat boasted members like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Capitol riots.
A source explained the private chat was a way for Stone, who was under a court gag order at the time, to communicate.
“F.O.S. was set up when Roger was gagged and this was a way for him to communicate with prominent people,” the source alleged. “The people that were in that chat were curated for a reason. The fact that a day before he says ‘fuck the voting, get to violence’ and then he sends this memo. He is calculated.”
Roger Stone responded to these claims in a statement to Mediaite: “If you have any actual evidence that any of this is true, please provide it and I will be happy to comment. I strongly suggest you ask your sources for documentation. These assertions are categorically false.”
When asked who he sent the memo to, Stone did not respond.
A source close to the documentary drew a direct line from the Stone memo through to the chaos that followed in the months after the 2020 election, which ultimately erupted in violence on Jan. 6.
“This memo, the Roger Stone manifesto, started all of this,” they said. “It was posted to a group of leaders of violent organizations, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 1st Amendment Praetorian, a disgraced NYPD cop. This memo was the kickoff to the events that followed.”
