Jan. 6 committee hearing will use clips from Roger Stone documentary
The Washington Post reported in March that the Copenhagen-based filmmakers had recorded footage of Stone as they followed him for extended periods between 2019 and 2021. They were at his side as Stone traveled to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rallies that spilled into violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Their film on Stone, “A Storm Foretold,” is expected to be released later this year.
The selection of clips for Wednesday’s hearing has not yet been finalized, according to people familiar with the committee’s planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. But thematically they are likely to focus on how Stone, former Trump chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and other associates of the president planned on declaring victory regardless of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, one of the people said.
A Jan. 6 committee spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Danish filmmakers, who previously told The Post that they were hesitant to cooperate with the congressional investigation, said this week that they had decided to comply with a subpoena issued by the committee. Politico reported in August that committee investigators had traveled to Denmark to review their material and interview the filmmakers.
The filmmakers arrived in the United States over the weekend ahead of the hearing on Wednesday.
“Being with Roger Stone and people around him for nearly three years, we realized what we saw after the 2020 election and Jan. 6 was not the culmination but the beginning of an antidemocratic movement in the United States,” director Christoffer Guldbrandsen said in a phone interview.
Committee investigators focused on six hours of material captured by the documentarians, selecting roughly 10 minutes of footage, according to the filmmakers. The material — a total of 14 clips was provided by the filmmakers — spans nearly three years of footage gathered for the forthcoming documentary.
In one clip, previously reported by The Post, Stone told a staffer four months before the election that Trump should use the powers of his office to reject official results and secure victory in the courts with help from federal judges who owed him fealty.
“It’s going to be really nasty,” Stone said at home on July 9, 2020, predicting that Democrats would try to steal the election. “If the electors show up at the electoral college, armed guards will throw them out,” he said, apparently referring to ceremonial meetings of electors in state capitals.
“ ‘I’m the president. F— you,’ ” Stone said, imagining Trump’s remarks. “ ‘You’re not stealing Florida, you’re not stealing Ohio. I’m challenging all of it, and the judges we’re going to are judges I appointed.’ ”
In another clip selected by the committee, Stone talked of violence after attending a rally for a Trump ally, Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), the day before the election.
“F— the voting, let’s get right to the violence. Shoot to kill, see an antifa, shoot to kill. F— ’em. Done with this bulls—.” Stone immediately followed this with: “I am of course only kidding. We renounce violence completely. We totally renounce violence. The left is the only ones who engage in violence.”
Later that day, as The Post previously reported, Stone seemed to welcome the prospect of clashes with left-wing activists. As an aide spoke of driving trucks into crowds of racial justice protesters, Stone said: “Once there’s no more election, there’s no reason why we can’t mix it up. These people are going to get what they’ve been asking for.”
