The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - May 21, 2026


The Stone Zone ｜ 05-21-26

Topics
redress fund victims
Hosted by
Roger Stone Troy Smith Jake Novak
Mentioned
Donald Trump Michael Caputo Todd Blanche Robert Mueller Mike Hunter Biden Joe Biden Connects Ontario Lockheed Martin Hillary Clinton Hank Greenberg Paul Manafort Eric Swalwell Sean Hannity Peter Strzok James Comey Carter Page J.D. Gordon Adam Schiff Ed Martin and 5 more
The Stone Zone ｜ 05-19-26 The Stone Zone ｜ 05-22-26

Episode Stats


Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

156.11

Word count

3,990

Sentence count

262

Harmful content

Toxicity

16

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of The Other Side, Michael Caputo talks about his experience with the FBI and Robert Mueller's Russia collusion investigation, and why he believes the government should pay compensation to the people who were tortured and mistreated by the FBI.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30.000 Welcome back into the Stone Zone. It was the morning of January 19th, 2019, when at 6 o'clock in the morning, 29 heavily armed FBI agents in full SWAT gear wearing night goggles and brandishing fully automatic M4 assault weapons surrounded my home at 6 o'clock in the morning.
00:00:53.520 They came in 17 armored vehicles, a helicopter, and two amphibious units.
00:01:00.600 As my friend Sean Hannity likes to point out, they were actually frogmen jumping off of these amphibious units onto the dock in my backyard,
00:01:10.860 because I lived on the Isles in Fort Lauderdale at that time, also brandishing these assault weapons.
00:01:18.120 As I say, they sent more men to arrest me for the first time, nonviolent alleged crime of lying under oath to Congress.
00:01:26.740 It wasn't until November 3rd of 2020 that we learned the complete truth.
00:01:34.100 You see, during the trial, my lawyers asked the judge for Robert Mueller's fully unredacted final report.
00:01:41.980 All of the sections of the report that regarded me had been completely blacked out.
00:01:46.500 The judge refused to give it to us. She said that she would review the report in her chambers and give us those sections that pertain to me. Somehow she forgot page 128. On page 128, Robert Mueller was forced to admit that he had found, in my case, no evidence of Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other crime.
00:02:10.980 He went so far as to admit that had he found that I was in touch with WikiLeaks, it would not have been a crime.
00:02:18.420 It would have been consistent with my First Amendment rights.
00:02:21.820 So my attitude about this new $1.8 billion fund is twofold.
00:02:28.160 One, those people who were tortured, those people who were subjected to inhumane conditions of their incarceration in January 6th,
00:02:38.080 I would like to see them compensated first.
00:02:41.180 I think they deserve it more than anyone.
00:02:44.180 My upcoming guest, Michael Caputo, is another one who's been put through hell.
00:02:48.560 I think his biggest single crime was being a friend of mine.
00:02:52.100 His second biggest crime was working diligently for Donald Trump.
00:02:56.680 He's the first American to apply to this fund.
00:03:00.780 He sent a letter to acting attorney Todd Blanche.
00:03:04.160 a little premature, I think, mechanically, but symbolically extraordinarily important.
00:03:10.720 We're going to talk a little bit about what he and his family went through
00:03:13.880 when it came to the Russian collusion hoax, because I think it's important for people to
00:03:21.140 understand. When they do this to you, they break you financially. In other words, I lost my home,
00:03:27.260 I lost my health insurance, my life insurance, I lost my life savings,
00:03:32.280 I had to sell my car.
00:03:34.600 I sold my beloved electric guitar, with which I put myself through college.
00:03:39.840 I was gagged, so I couldn't speak in my own defense, making it very hard to raise money for your legal defense.
00:03:48.140 And through my belief in God and being redeemed in the blood of the cross, I'm with you here today to talk about it.
00:03:55.480 We'll be right back with Michael Caputo on The Other Side.
00:04:01.700 We'll see you next time.
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00:05:38.440 And we're back in the Stone Zone. Michael Caputo is not merely a veteran of political warfare.
00:05:45.860 He's also a patriot, a communicator of rare skill, a loyal friend, and a man who's paid
00:05:51.660 an obscene personal price when he was a very young man, that he was my driver, something he
00:05:57.060 enjoys telling people. I've known him long enough to know the measure of the man and the incredible
00:06:03.380 ordeal that he and his family have been through. And now he is the first person, I think largely
00:06:09.500 symbolically, to apply to this new $1.8 billion fund that President Trump is essentially creating
00:06:18.980 to compensate those who are the victims of political weaponization.
00:06:24.700 The president sued the IRS for, I think, $10 billion.
00:06:29.440 He could have won that lawsuit and put that money in his pocket.
00:06:32.660 Instead, he settled the lawsuit to create this fund to help people,
00:06:37.920 well, people like Michael Caputo.
00:06:39.920 Mike, welcome to the Stone Zone.
00:06:42.240 Thanks, Roger.
00:06:43.180 I heard you wanted to talk to me.
00:06:45.120 The first thing I thought was, oh, I must be in trouble.
00:06:48.980 Thanks for inviting me on.
00:06:53.640 No, look, you're all over the news, and I think that's a good thing.
00:06:58.600 As we both know, the actual physical setup and logistics of this fund are not fully operational yet,
00:07:08.800 but you are one of the first people who should be compensated.
00:07:12.440 I thought it would be useful for our audience to recognize and understand what you went through
00:07:18.780 because beneath the armor of being a tough political operative,
00:07:22.780 you're a devoted husband, you're a loving father,
00:07:25.820 you're a man of deep faith.
00:07:27.640 We've gone to mass together on numerous occasions.
00:07:31.300 But you're also an American who endured a vicious weapon,
00:07:36.180 the warped federal prosecutor prosecuting me,
00:07:41.180 pounding the table and bellowing, I am the law.
00:07:44.240 I can't get that picture out of my mind.
00:07:46.740 But give folks some idea of what you and your family have gone through.
00:07:52.060 Remember, Roger, we worked together on that campaign and got so many others on the 2016 campaign.
00:07:59.960 And, you know, I've always I developed a specialty in Russia, Ukraine, because the USAID sent me over there after the wall fell in order to get democratic electoral laws in place in Russia, Ukraine and other places.
00:08:13.740 I was there for nine on a decade, you know.
00:08:16.680 And so, you know, I naturally became interested in doing that kind of work again after the campaign.
00:08:24.260 I remember I called you and I said, hey, I think I'm going to go over to Russia and see if there's something I could do to help bring our countries together again. 0.94
00:08:30.660 And you told me that's the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. 0.56
00:08:34.420 I'll never forget that. 0.99
00:08:35.760 And I said, why?
00:08:36.580 And he says, don't you feel it?
00:08:37.720 You say, don't you feel it?
00:08:39.720 They're on us, Caputo.
00:08:40.860 And you were the first one who told me that you felt like there was a crossfire hurricane kind of investigation going on.
00:08:48.020 And indeed, it was going on for nine months when you told me that. 0.88
00:08:51.280 And everything went to crap from there. 0.62
00:08:54.000 You know, not only am I married to a Ukrainian, I have all daughters, three young girls. 0.96
00:09:00.320 And at the time, a teenager, a five-year-old and a seven-year-old.
00:09:03.600 And the attacks on my family were profound.
00:09:05.860 We lost everything.
00:09:06.760 You know, each one of my daughters suffered uniquely and terribly.
00:09:10.860 But we lost our house. We lost our college fund for our kids. We lost our savings. I lost my business. I lost all my clients. And in the end, I lost my health with stress-driven throat cancer, head and neck cancer, and damn near died.
00:09:26.140 I mean, the interesting thing is, Roger, my health and everything else fell apart. There are thousands of people just like me. You, my goodness, my sister, my dear sister, Nidia, your wife got the same stress-driven kind of cancer I did.
00:09:39.940 We were watching it go on all around us. Remember? And in the end, I think a lot of people didn't believe that there would ever be any kind of restitution.
00:09:51.000 Roger, they spied on me because of my movie about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden profiting in Ukraine.
00:10:00.020 They opened that in 21, when Joe Biden was inaugurated, within hours.
00:10:05.920 And it wasn't closed.
00:10:07.480 They were on me, surveilling me, spying on me, until December 25, a year into the Trump administration.
00:10:14.660 The FBI was secretly surveilling me.
00:10:16.960 This is really wild stuff.
00:10:19.360 And when, you know, at the same time, Roger, a lot of people don't understand that I worked on the Trump campaign, not just 16, but 24.
00:10:27.820 Right. And I, you know, I was put in charge in some ways, anti-weaponization policy.
00:10:34.520 You know, I think that's one of the reasons I was hired, because I was, of course, wrapped up in it and I knew a lot about what was going on.
00:10:41.280 And I must have written and marshaled 100 pages of policy research on the anti-weaponization policy front.
00:10:49.560 And I'm going to tell you, at the end of 2023, about November, I think, I went to a policy meeting at the West Palm Beach headquarters, and they brought up an anti-weaponization fund.
00:11:01.740 This fund has been has been has been thought through and talked about at the highest levels of the best attorneys in all of Washington, all the way to Milwaukee and the convention.
00:11:14.960 Roger, you remember, you know, the the the platform committee is made up of the best lawyers in Washington on the Republican side.
00:11:22.720 They volunteer for a week.
00:11:24.700 And those guys were talking about an anti-weaponization fund and how to fund it in Milwaukee in July 24.
00:11:32.200 This is a thing people don't understand.
00:11:34.600 Two things, very important.
00:11:36.360 Number one, this is not an off-the-cuff, a seat-of-the-pants kind of operation.
00:11:42.520 The Trump team and some of the smartest lawyers I ever saw, I was there, right?
00:11:47.200 They've been developing this since 2023, number one.
00:11:51.240 And a number two, it's the hardest thing is to get it across the finish line, as you can imagine.
00:11:56.660 By the time I left the DOJ in May of 25, I was under federal investigation and I knew it by then.
00:12:02.840 So I left and I started seeking my document through Judicial Watch and going for it, trying to get it closed.
00:12:08.400 But really, at that time, it appears now that Todd Blanche and Maine Justice was putting this together from the original idea,
00:12:17.660 doing the most difficult part, you know, running that ball the last 10 yards
00:12:21.820 because we couldn't figure out how to fund it, right, in the policy discussions.
00:12:27.200 So I was very surprised when I woke up Monday morning.
00:12:30.480 I didn't expect this.
00:12:31.960 I didn't know it was coming.
00:12:32.980 I probably shouldn't know.
00:12:34.500 But there are those two points.
00:12:35.920 Number one, good luck litigating this.
00:12:37.940 Some of the smartest Republican lawyers I've ever met put this together.
00:12:40.600 And number two, Todd Blanche took it to the finish line.
00:12:44.020 And that's the hardest part.
00:12:46.000 Yeah, I give the acting attorney general, Todd Blanch, enormous credit, not finally, not just because he charged James Comey, the former FBI director, with his threat to kill the president, which is very clearly what it was, but his declaration in recent days that they're now seriously examining the 2020 election.
00:13:07.380 Also, they are very serious about prosecuting those involved in the seditious conspiracy of the Russian collusion hoax, which morphed into two phony impeachments, which morphed into the theft of the 2020 election, which morphed into the so-called documents case, which morphed into Arctic Frost.
00:13:27.860 the greatest extra-constitutional abuse of power in American political history,
00:13:33.960 spying on Republican senators, congressmen, and other prominent supporters.
00:13:39.120 I think it's important people understand that your story is not just some abstraction.
00:13:44.880 It's not just some legal footnote.
00:13:47.380 It's not another disposable headline in the fetid swamp of Washington gossip.
00:13:54.380 It's actually the anatomy of lawfare in its purest and ugliest form.
00:14:00.080 They begin with a political target.
00:14:01.920 In this case, you.
00:14:02.920 I've been through this myself.
00:14:04.600 They attach expition to you through innuendo.
00:14:07.320 Then they drag you through investigations, subpoenas, interrogations, legal bills, public humiliation, endless leaks, and professional annihilation.
00:14:18.560 then even if no charges are ultimately filed, which was the case for you, and no crime is found,
00:14:26.560 they shrug and pretend, well, the process itself was not just the punishment, when in fact, the process is the punishment.
00:14:34.080 Truly.
00:14:34.740 You have been an advocate for redress, and as I said, I don't know if you heard my opening segment,
00:14:42.820 as much as I went through hell, as much as you and your family went through hell,
00:14:47.140 I want to see those people who were abused on January 6th, denied due process, imprisoned in conditions that violate the Geneva Conventions.
00:14:57.300 I really want to see those people get their due compensation out of this.
00:15:05.940 To me, those people suffered immeasurably when, in fact, the Fed, the entire January 6th thing was indeed a Fed surrection.
00:15:17.140 I was with Ed Martin serving as this kind of like acting chief of staff when he was a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
00:15:24.720 And all those pardons went down.
00:15:27.680 And I can tell you there was discussion because there were some violent felons in there.
00:15:32.940 Right. There were some people that actually struck police, et cetera.
00:15:36.400 And there was and there was a discussion in the room like, listen, I mean, we need to move swiftly or do we need to go through here and adjudicate them one by one?
00:15:46.780 And swiftly was the answer. And they did it. Now we have a panel of five that they're putting together. I think the vast majority of the men and women who were abused in January 6 deserve recompense. But now they have a panel of five that can go through this and they can set parameters that they weren't able to do because the president promised immediate action and delivered it after Inauguration Day.
00:16:14.040 Folks, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to The Stone Zone.
00:16:16.960 We're talking to Michael Caputo.
00:16:18.880 Michael Caputo's career is remarkable by any standard.
00:16:21.540 He's a Buffalo native, a military veteran, a skilled Republican strategist, a communications professional, and a longtime ally of one Donald J. Trump.
00:16:32.540 Mike, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back with more of Michael Caputo and Roger Stone on the other side.
00:16:44.040 this is the stone zone now get him his own it's the stone zone a man who's gone through hell
00:16:57.120 but he's kept going and he's smart and he's strong and people love him not everybody but
00:17:03.480 people love him and respect him and we're back in the stone zone we're talking to army veteran
00:17:08.700 Michael Caputo, who is a longtime policy consultant, a cancer survivor, who worked over at HHS under
00:17:17.480 President Donald Trump to help the efforts to make America healthy again. Over his 40-year career,
00:17:24.620 he served in various positions across Washington, including working for a man who belongs in the
00:17:30.080 Football Hall of Fame, Congressman Jack Kemp. That's where I first met him. Later, the U.S.
00:17:34.980 government sent him on a decade of international work in both Russia and Ukraine. That's probably
00:17:40.500 why he became a target in the Mueller-Russia collusion hoax. He served in senior advisory
00:17:48.100 capacities in both Donald Trump's 2016 and his 2024 presidential campaigns, and then later as
00:17:53.880 assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS during COVID. He was diagnosed with stress-driven
00:18:00.220 meditastic head and neck cancer, which he has survived because he's redeemed in the blood of
00:18:06.400 the cross. And now he is the first person in the country to, I think symbolically, but importantly,
00:18:14.060 apply for redress from this $1.8 billion fund that Donald Trump has very generously decided
00:18:22.720 to create to compensate those who are the victims of weaponization. I can't stress how much how
00:18:28.620 selfless this is. Trump could have won a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for illegally
00:18:35.920 leaking his tax returns. Instead, he settled, and rather than put the settlement money in his
00:18:42.180 pocket, he is dedicating it to this fund. So I think that is an enormously selfless act. Michael?
00:18:51.360 It is, and I'll tell you, what we have to understand here, people listening and others,
00:18:58.620 somebody listening out there is afraid to come forward you know it's been nine years of sheer
00:19:04.520 hell for many people you know my fbi investigation just ended four months ago they were spying on me
00:19:10.460 for a year of the trump administration and for eight years before that but roger you know you
00:19:16.240 anybody who interacted with you uh and with me because we were under investigation by these uh
00:19:22.240 by these, you know, weaponized, you know, political types.
00:19:27.160 If you were my driver at some point, if you were my assistant at some point,
00:19:31.920 et cetera, et cetera, I'm finding people who were interrogated by the FBI
00:19:36.280 during the first administration, friends of mine,
00:19:39.980 and I didn't even know they got attorney's fees.
00:19:42.580 My cameraman on my 2020 film on Biden's ripping off Ukraine,
00:19:48.520 My cameraman just came forward recently and told me he was represented by counsel for several, for a better part of a year while the FBI was interrogating him.
00:19:59.100 These people have $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in legal fees.
00:20:03.880 They deserve recompense.
00:20:06.220 They deserve restitution. 0.98
00:20:07.600 For cripes sake, reimbursement, right?
00:20:10.540 There are, and let me tell you, Roger, you know this.
00:20:13.060 There are thousands of these men and women who have suffered at some level, less than you, less than me, and God forbid, Carter Page and Paul Manafort and Raleigh Terrace and J.D. Gordon.
00:20:27.860 You know, not much, but in reality, 25, getting your legal fees back when you had to sell your house and you're living in a trailer, that's something, by gosh.
00:20:38.320 And that's what Donald Trump is doing here right now.
00:20:40.860 It's not that he's out there looking to reimburse people who aren't really suffering.
00:20:48.420 The vast majority of the people that went through the weaponized attack on Donald Trump, they're suffering terribly.
00:20:56.140 I've met people who lost their houses.
00:20:57.700 I've met people that are being criminally prosecuted right now.
00:21:02.680 This is an urgent situation.
00:21:04.220 And a lot of people out there, not just my family, and God bless you, Roger, I know you went through a lot.
00:21:08.920 not just your family, you know, not just the people we know.
00:21:13.300 You know, when I was researching this issue for Donald Trump's 24 campaign,
00:21:16.940 I got to know dozens and dozens and dozens of people who were just destroyed by a $50,000 legal fee.
00:21:26.120 There are a lot of people deserving of this, and I'm real pleased to see the president
00:21:29.420 and Todd Blanche taking this out there and getting a lot of slings and arrows for it, too.
00:21:35.320 By the way, Roger, if you're a Democrat, listen to The Stone Zone, and you want some recompense for the way the politically weaponized government abuse you, you're a Democrat, I urge you to come forward right now and test the system.
00:21:48.960 I bet you get your due in restitution.
00:21:52.300 Well, there's one other great thing about this, Mike, and that is it gives us a forum to point out that the only Russian that we talked to, the only Russian who was sent to talk to us, turned out to be an FBI informant.
00:22:07.580 It's funny how Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell made much of this.
00:22:13.700 Oh, Stone and Caputo were meeting with this Russian informant until we revealed that that Russian informant, who's going by the name Hank Greenberg, was actually an FBI informant in the country, probably for the specific purpose of trying to entrap us.
00:22:30.560 Somehow that missed the mainstream media.
00:22:33.180 They missed that minor point.
00:22:34.580 Yeah, they did.
00:22:35.700 And also a guy who was accused of murdering his business partner in South and Central America, a guy who is still here working for the FBI.
00:22:43.280 Thirty years in the FBI informant and somehow or another shift.
00:22:49.620 Missed that, didn't he?
00:22:51.240 Yeah, it's extraordinary.
00:22:52.760 This is a guy who told me that he had vital information of great values of Donald Trump on Hillary Clinton.
00:22:59.240 And I said, well, I'd have to see it to know whether it had any value.
00:23:02.080 And he said, well, that's going to cost you two million dollars.
00:23:06.620 I laughed and said, if I had $2 million, that's not how I'd spend it.
00:23:10.480 And he said, you don't understand.
00:23:11.740 It's not your money I want.
00:23:12.980 It's Donald Trump's money.
00:23:14.100 I said, no, you don't understand.
00:23:15.980 Trump has $2 million, but he's not spending it on opposition research.
00:23:20.260 Right.
00:23:20.900 One of the low points, one of the low points of the mother witch hunt.
00:23:25.460 Roger.
00:23:26.040 And I mean, I will never live it down.
00:23:28.020 That's one of the two things that you all never live down.
00:23:30.380 And that is that I told this Greenberg cat who called me, I said, I don't know.
00:23:34.620 I'm up at Trump Tower.
00:23:36.420 My buddy is Rodger's down there in Miami, and I had you go meet with him.
00:23:40.640 You showed up, and he had a red Make America Great Again hat on
00:23:44.140 and a big picture of Donald Trump on a T-shirt.
00:23:47.500 It was out of a movie.
00:23:50.800 It was just like the FBI.
00:23:52.320 Let me tell you something.
00:23:53.280 I understand this now, and the people who are listening should understand. 1.00
00:23:57.520 With the FBI, never assign to conspiracy what you could blame on stupidity. 1.00
00:24:04.620 That was one of the most stupid ops I've ever heard of in my life. 1.00
00:24:08.880 Well, if he was undercover, he was not very well disguised. 1.00
00:24:13.340 He's scrolling through his phone, showing me pictures of him and his girlfriend at various Trump rallies.
00:24:20.020 And in the end, my meeting with him lasted less than 10 minutes
00:24:24.020 before I realized that there was nothing there to do or to be done.
00:24:28.940 They made much of the fact that I'd forgotten that I had even met the guy.
00:24:33.700 But then they wanted to forget it entirely when he posted online proof that he was an FBI informant.
00:24:41.380 Yeah. One of the one of the dumbest criminals I've ever met. 1.00
00:24:44.380 Yeah. And, you know, I'll tell you, Roger, I don't know. 1.00
00:24:49.220 I brought that that idiot into our lives just as a shrug, you know, you know, these clowns are everywhere. 1.00
00:24:55.460 But really, it was a live operation going on right then. 1.00
00:24:58.800 And by the way, when you were sitting in that stupid restaurant in Sunny Isles, Florida, with this clown, right, as you sat there with that character, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were having a little bit of fun on top of the desk in Mueller's conference room on the sixth or seventh floor of the FBI. 0.97
00:25:17.640 That was the same era. 0.98
00:25:19.600 Isn't it crazy to think about that now?
00:25:22.160 It is indeed.
00:25:23.120 All right, we're going to have to wrap it up there.
00:25:24.620 I want to thank my guest, Michael Caputo.
00:25:26.340 I want to thank all of our listeners for tuning in to The Stone Zone today.
00:25:29.840 Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.