Statement of Roger Stones On His Recently Remembered Contact with a Russian FBI Informant

My critics have flipped because I only recently recalled a contact in 2016 who was both a Russian and an FBI informant. The man was only in the country on a visa requested by the Miami office of the FBI saying his presence in the country served a “public benefit”. This FBI informant who called himself Henry Greenberg is actually Gennady Vasilievich Vostretsov, a convicted violent felon who spent 10 years in prison and has been an FBI informant for 17 years.

I knew none of this when my longtime colleague Michael Caputo asked me to meet with this gentleman because he claimed he had information that would be “beneficial” to the Trump campaign. Thus the claim by Shelby Holliday of The Wall Street Journal that the meeting was based on a promise of “dirt” on Hillary Clinton is a typical fake news lie.

Since my 20 minute meeting with the FBI informant resulted in no inappropriate or illegal act, I have no reason to dissemble or hide the meeting since nothing improper or significant resulted from it. Even the FBI informant himself confirmed for The Washington Post that I rejected his demand for $2 million.

I now realize the FBI informant’s demand for “Trump’s money” in a $2 million payment for undisclosed damaging information on Hillary Clinton, which he only claimed to have at the meeting, was an attempt to compromise Trump himself. Knowing I have an almost 40 year relationship with the President, Comey’s FBI thought I could get Trump to pony up thus compromising him. That is why they sent the informant.

I flatly rejected the FBI informant’s request for $2 million as The Washington Post reported.

The question isn’t why I didn’t recall this – since the results of this contact are inconsequential and in no way improper or illegal. The question is why was the FBI seeking to set me up shortly after their outreach to John Papadopolous in April and about the time the DOJ and FBI were formulating the phony Trump dossier with the help of Russian intelligence informants.

Another question is why Comey’s FBI would send a paid informant who is clearly only in the United States at their sufferance except as a “Stef Halper” type operation to penetrate Trump’s circle and compromise him through me. Gennady Vasilievich Vostretsov has indisputably been an FBI informant for 17 years, has a long association with Russian organized crime and spent 10 years in prison for a violent crime. He was deported from the country in 2000 but was conveniently in Miami in 2016 where he is working for the FBI. Here is his rap sheet: http://democratdossier.org.

Michael Caputo who asked me to take this meeting had no foreknowledge that the FBI informant would demand $2 million for the information he “wanted to get to the Trump campaign”. A text message in the hands of The Washington Post reflect my rejection of his proposal and I chastised Caputo because the meeting was “a waste of time”.

I have reason to believe that Robert Mueller’s investigators have this text exchange, which I believe they obtained through an illegal FISA warrant as reported by The New York Times on January 20th, 2017. Since FISA warrants can only be issued against US Citizens if they are actively involved in espionage on behalf of a foreign power against The United States. I certainly don’t meet that criteria. Thus this warrant, like the ones on Paul Manafort and Carter Page, was politically motivated and the fruit of an illegal surveillance.

The government insists in the Manafort case, that Manafort was never under surveillance of any kind either in an earlier period in which he was working in Ukraine, a surveillance in which no evidence of wrong doing was found or when his surveillance was turned back on at precisely the time that he joined the Trump campaign. This will ultimately come out if Manafort goes to trial as I expect him to do. The issuance of a FISA warrant against me is a violation of my civil rights and a violation of my right to privacy.

I believe any evidence that Mueller uses to frame me for some bogus offense will be the fruits of an illegal FISA warrant. There is no doubt that the office of Special Counsel has already accessed my email, text messages and phone calls in a “police state” move to conjure up some faux infraction for which I could be prosecuted.

The Special Counsel seems determined to frame me for some bogus offense both to silence me as a critic of their investigation and for political motives and to induce me to testify against the President in some way. This I will not do.

So the real question is not why I failed to remember an innocuous meeting, it’s the FBI was using an informant to set me up.