The Stone Zone dissects rural hospitals’ collapse under congressional threats while dissecting Tennessee’s 7th District race, where Trump-backed Van Epps ousted progressive Democrat Ben. Jordan’s Smith subpoena exposes alleged lawfare, and Trump’s 34.5 mpg rollback clashes with Biden’s 50.4 target. Roger Stone frames Juan Orlando Hernandez’s pardon as justice denied—cartels allegedly bribed Zelaya ($1.15M), Castro scrapped extradition treaties, and Stone compares it to his Mueller-era framing, accusing Weissman of leaks. The episode ties political battles to media bias, election integrity, and narco collusion in Central America. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
The Stone Zone.
Entertaining and informative.
On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
You are now entering the Stone Zone.
Well, with House Republicans holding a very narrow six-seat margin in the lower house, 219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, all eyes were on the special election in Tennessee's 7th congressional district yesterday, and we can now report that Republican candidate Matt Van Epps has won that special election, defeating Democrat State Representative Afton Ben in what was a closer-than-expected race.
Media outlets projected the race fairly early after totals from Nashville were offset by results from Republican-leaning counties across the district.
Van Epps had been emphatically endorsed by President Donald Trump in the final days of that campaign, calling Van Epps one of the best candidates we've ever had.
And his opponent, progressive Democrat Ben, a woman who hates Christianity, will take away your guns, wants open borders, transgender for everybody, men and women's sports, and openly disdains country music, which, let's face it, outside of Nashville is very dangerous for any candidate.
The contest drew national attention as Democrats hopes to steal a seat in a district that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2024.
Van Epps previously served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services and ran on a strongly pro-Trump platform focused on economic development, manufacturing, and what he described as a pro-business growth platform, including support for cryptocurrency and development of artificial intelligence.
Ben, a self-described peed-off social worker, campaigned on health care access, opposition to immigration enforcement policies, and community advocacy, setting herself up to be the AOC of the South.
Some commentators are perturbed by the narrow margin, but they should remember Stone's rule.
A win is a win.
We should be happy we won the seat and use this momentum to build strong results in the midterm elections.
There is no time here for blackpilling, as the young people call it.
We have to redouble our efforts to make sure as many America First pro-Trump candidates on the ballot next time in the midterm elections.
And then the way we assure victory is by targeting rhinos for elimination in the primaries and putting candidates on the ballot next year who strongly support the Trump agenda.
That's actually what brings voters out.
Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has sent a subpoena to former Special Counsel Jack Smith for a closed-door deposition scheduled for December 17th.
This move shows that Congress may finally be getting serious about investigating the mishandling of the criminal probes that targeted President Donald Trump, the tsunami of lawfare against him as he attempted to return to the White House.
Congressman Jordan demands that Smith release the key information he has about the illicit and extra-constitutional probes as the committee finds out all the ways that federal law enforcement was used improperly and illegally and unconstitutionally against President Trump and top Republicans.
The Arctic Frost target list included senators, congressmen, Trump family members, and, well, yours truly.
Smith was the mastermind of the dubious prosecution of Trump over the efforts of Trump and his supporters to combat voter fraud after the 2020 election, the classified documents case brought against President Trump after leaving office that resulted in the shameful raid at his home in Palm Beach, Mar-Lago, and the secretive Arctic Frost operation, which resulted in Republican lawmakers,
conservative organizations and individuals, Trump allies and friends, and even some conservative media outlets being subject to illicit surveillance in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In addition to testimony, Jordan's subpoena demands that Jack Smith's internal records, including communications and documents from his time as special counsel, be produced.
The Justice Department has authorized Smith to testify without restrictions tied to executive privilege, setting the stage for what will be, hopefully, a major reckoning against the lawfare campaign meant to destroy Donald Trump and his supporters.
The noose is tightening figuratively, perhaps literally, around the neck of Smith.
Rolling Back Fuel Economy Standards00:02:24
All of his fellow deep state co-conspirators should be losing sleep over what is to come as their overreaching and arrogance is coming back to bite them big time with Donald Trump back in the White House.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal Wednesday to roll back Biden-area fuel economy standards, a move that will lower vehicle prices and, I believe, expand consumer choice.
The plan, announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will reset requirements for models years 2022 through 2031, targeting an average of 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031 instead of the 50.4 miles per gallon level finalized under the Biden administration.
These revised standards better reflect current market realities and prevent regulatory targets from forcing cars out of reach for the average person.
Under the proposal, fuel economy increases would slow to between a quarter and half percent per year, sharply replacing the rises that were put in place during Joe Biden's time in office.
Officials estimate the change could cut upfront vehicle prices by about $900 per car.
The plan also eliminates credit trading among automakers, which begins in 2028, a system that disproportionately benefits electric-only manufacturers and their credit selling schemes to hide their lack of viability in the U.S. marketplace.
President Donald Trump is promoting this plan alongside leaders from the major U.S. automakers who say rigid mandates were pushing the industry towards plant closures and layoffs across the country.
Executives from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have praised the shift as a balance between efficiency and affordability.
Ford's Jim Farley said it allows progress on emissions without sacrificing consumer choice, while General Motors' Mary Barra warned that prior rules would have made it virtually impossible to keep factories running.
The Trump administration is laser-focused on keeping cars affordable, protecting jobs, and letting innovation instead of government mandates drive the market forward.
Crooked Hillary's Warning00:03:30
To me, this is the sort of meat and potatoes American populism that put the Republican Party on a winning trajectory in the last election, and now we need to see more of it.
Meanwhile, crooked Hillary Clinton is weighing in on the future of Democrat politics, and her prognosis is, well, not very good.
The two-time failed presidential candidate is evidently dismayed by the rise of AOC, Zorayan Mamdami, and other radicals who are now clearly dominating the party, particularly among younger people.
And they're spreading an unabashedly anti-Israel message while they do it.
Hillary Clinton lashed out at the misinformations being spread on social media platforms like TikTok, which was used for years as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party, and has been radicalizing young people against the Jewish state.
Hillary Clinton said, smart, well-educated young people from our own country, from around the world, where are they getting their information?
They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok.
That is where they're learning about what happened on October 7th, what happened in the days, weeks, and months to follow.
And that's a serious problem.
It's a serious problem for democracy, said Hillary, whether it's Israel or the United States.
And it's a serious problem for our young people.
It's not just the usual suspects.
It's a lot of young Jewish Americans who don't know the history and don't understand.
A lot of the challenge is with the younger people.
More than 50% of young people in America, according to Hillary, get their news from social media.
So just pause for just a second.
They're seeing short-form videos, some of which are totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that's where they get their information.
It's very rare that I agree with Hillary Clinton on anything.
After all, I wrote the book, The Clinton's War on Women, which is the definitive rundown on the epic crimes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the penicillin-resistant syphilis of the American politics, is what I called them.
In this case, though, Hillary Clinton may actually have a point.
The problem is that establishment politicians like Hillary Clinton created this monster by spreading this woke nonsense for years.
They fed the alt-left thinking that these radicals could serve as their shock troops against Republicans, and it worked for a while until President Trump came down that golden escalator and proved himself to be impervious to the leftist attacks.
Now, after a major electoral victory, the monster is turning against mainstream Democrats like Hillary.
That's why I continue to say that the old Democrat Party, the Democrat Party of John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman, a party that believed in capitalism, free enterprise, a strong national defense, and, well, God, exists no longer.
Really, Hillary Clinton has nobody to blame but herself.
Now the battle between the future of the country is between the America First forces and the hardcore anti-Israel left.
I believe that the Republicans in Donald Trump and those who stand for America First must win, or our country and our civilization will meet the same fate as Russia in the 20th century after the Bolsheviks took control.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
Pardons and False Testimony00:16:11
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration announced Tuesday that it has suspended processing of immigration applications from 19 countries, citing national security and public safety concerns.
The order halts green cards, asylum claims, and U.S. citizenship applications for affected nationals.
The policy affects applicants from Afghanistan, Somalia, Miramar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and of course, Venezuela.
This move follows last year's shooting near the White House, where an Afghan national was accused of killing one National Guard soldier and critically wounding a second.
Administration officials say the pause allows for a comprehensive re-review of cases to strengthen vetting and prevent these kind of security threats.
I say it's about time.
Officials say the step follows a partial ban that was enacted back in June and reflects concerns about screening failures.
Border policy chief Tom Holman, a good friend of mine, called the Afghan screening process the biggest national security failure in our history.
Tom Holman is usually calls it straight.
There is no more room in America for the refuse of the third world countries.
Not to mention many of these countries harbor grudges against us because of foreign policies pushed by the CIA that most Americans don't even know about.
So we're opening the door for supposedly humanitarian purposes to different people who hate us and want to wage war against us.
This comes to an abrupt end with the Trump administration.
Our country is full and we're putting Americans first for a change.
It is time, in my view, to close our borders for people from these various countries.
Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry criticized President Donald Trump on Tuesday following Trump's candid comments accusing members of Minnesota's Somali community of involvement in large-scale fraud.
It was revealed last week that under the nose and with the full knowledge of Governor Tim Walsh, $250 million was stolen from American taxpayers and was actually routed to terrorists in Somalia.
Yet the mayor of Minneapolis Fry says that Trump is wrong to criticize the Somalis and we want them here.
Somali people have been an extraordinary benefit.
I'll say it again.
Somali people have been a benefit to our city for longer than I've been in our city, said the mayor.
They've started businesses and created jobs.
They've added to the cultural fabric of what Minneapolis is.
They're welcoming me when I first came to Minneapolis.
The bottom line of this is very, very simple, folks.
They need those votes.
There are, even as we speak, thousands of Somalians who are not U.S. citizens, but who are voting in the Minnesota elections.
And therein lies the problem.
If you criticize this, of course, you're called all kinds of names, xenophobic, racist, and so on.
But I believe that it's a time for only those who are actually legally eligible to vote in the United States, meaning U.S. citizens, to be allowed to do so.
I'm Roger Stone.
You're listening to the Stone Zone.
Please keep listening because we'll be right back.
The Stone Zone.
Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
The White House released a video Tuesday featuring military veterans criticizing the so-called seditious six.
Those were elected Democrats who are military veterans who made a video calling for members of our current military to refuse to comply with, quote, illegal orders from President Donald Trump.
In response to the seditious six, veterans appeared in the White House video, arguing that their message has to do with military discipline and the chain of command.
Administration said their remarks threaten the principle of civilian control of our armed services.
Now, I find it quite curious that Senator Slotkin from Michigan, who seems to be leading this particular charge, predicted only two weeks ago that it was only a matter of weeks before some National Guardsman was shot and killed.
And of course, two weeks later, exactly that happened.
The other thing that's disturbing to me is that among these congresswomen is the Congresswoman from New Hampshire, Congressman Goodlander.
She just happens to be the wife of Jake Sullivan.
Jake Sullivan was Joe Biden's national security advisor.
Before that, he was Hillary Clinton's national security advisor, and he was one of the architects of the Russian collusion hoax.
Very specifically, it was Jake Sullivan who approved the false claim that Alpha Bank, a Russia bank, had a computer terminal inside the Trump organization headquarters on Fifth Avenue, New York.
That, of course, turned out to be completely false.
So I agree with Alex Jones, but even Jesse Waters now sees that there's something much larger and darker afoot here.
I believe that those who refuse to accept the results of the last presidential election are planning some mass-based false flag or insurgency because they know they can't win an election.
I agree with one of those veterans who's at the White House, the director of Moms for America, who said the White House has made it very clear that orders that come from the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of War have been upheld as lawful.
Suggesting otherwise is designed to create confusion and weaken our national security.
For those senators and members of Congress to come forward, use their status as veterans to claim in some way that they're allowed to stand in the way of the normal chain of command, well, that's treason.
Jesse Jane Duff, who served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans Employment and Training Service, said, it's not ironic, though, that these are all Democrats that defy and despise the President of the United States, and they would love to see some form of uprising in this country to go against the president.
So this blatant act of insubordination from the so-called sedition six with the armed forces is clearly, in my view, a criminal act, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is now facing the potential of a court-martial as a result.
The White House is correct to keep pushing this and not just letting it slide.
This is a battle for the soul of our nation's military and for our country.
We're going to need a strong military to bring terrorists, foreign and domestic, to justice.
The Democrats want the military to stand down when it comes time to put the Deep Street Kingprints and their allies, the Antifa thugs, into shackles.
And that cannot happen if we want to make America great again.
Thanks for tuning in.
I'm Roger Stone.
listening to the Stone Zone here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
We'll be right back with more hot politics.
So whatever you do, please keep listening.
We'll be right back.
The Stone Zone.
Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
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Last week, President Donald Trump made an announcement that rocked the foundations of both American and Honduran politics when he said he was going to issue a pardon for the country's former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
True to his word, Hernandez was released from custody yesterday, and he's now a free man after serving a little over one year in prison.
To be very clear, last Friday morning, I forwarded a four-page letter from the former president of Honduras, Hernandez, to President Donald Trump.
But contrary to some in the mainstream media, such as Esquire and others, as well as various internet trolls, I was compensated nothing whatsoever for my advocacy for a pardon for the former Honduran president.
And I simply forwarded a compelling letter from Hernandez to the president because a review of the facts in the case led me to the clear conclusion that the charges against Hernandez were both politically motivated and false.
Hernandez was charged and prosecuted utilizing the same tactics of lawfare in which President Trump himself was charged by special counsel Jack Smith.
In other words, in short, Juan Orlando Hernandez was framed.
President Trump's clemency for the former Honduran president is therefore an act of both justice and mercy.
In fact, President Hernandez's letter was sent to me by an investigative journalist, Shane Trejo, as I disclosed on my radio show on Sunday, where I hosted the former Honduran First Lady, Ana Garcia de Hernandez, and their two daughters, Ana Daniel and Isabella Hernandez, after the pardon was announced.
The pardon came days before the national election, where the ruling left-wing Libra Party hoped to remain in control.
Libra is, of course, in league with the regimes in both Cuba and Venezuela.
Immediately after Hernandez was termed out of office in 2022, the Libra Party president, Zio Marcastro, wife of former President Mel Zelaya, worked with the Biden-Harris Department of Justice to extradite Hernandez over completely fabricated charges of drug trafficking.
But examining the facts of the case show that there was nothing more than a politically motivated hit by the Biden-Harris administration in which their witch hunt against Donald Trump and his allies, both foreign and domestic, continued.
Actually, throughout Hernandez's tenure as Honduran president, he worked very closely with the United States on drug interdictions and received President Trump's praise for his work in doing so.
Hernandez even signed the extradition treaty that allowed for criminals who were involved in drug trafficking to be sent to the United States and prosecuted, a landmark agreement in cracking down against the scourge of illegal drugs.
In fact, President Trump said at the time, President Hernandez is working with the United States very closely.
You know what's going on on our southern border, and we're winning after years and years of losing.
We're stopping drugs at a level that has never happened.
President Trump said that back on December of 2019.
But unbeknownst to Trump, agents of the deep state were plotting a case against his ally in stopping the drug trade, using testimony from convicted criminals who Hernandez had extradited to the United States and fabricating a case against Hernandez, casting he himself as a drug trafficker.
During Hernandez's trial, a law enforcement official gave completely false testimony, claiming that cocaine trafficking to the United States from Honduras had increased during Hernandez's administration, when in fact cocaine trafficking to the United States had sharply decreased.
But the judge, of course, rejected Hernandez' request for a retrial on that basis.
Hernandez's case was largely based on conjecture and the testimony of murderous convicted cartel leaders who had an axe to grind against Hernandez and who were highly incentivized to produce testimony, damning the man who sent them to prison to begin with because of the deals that they were working with the DEA.
Two of these cartel kingpens were Carlos Negro Lobo and Dives Leonel Rivera Meradiaga.
Now, Lobos was extradited to the United States in 2014 as part of Hernandez's widespread crackdown against the narco-trafficking in Honduras.
U.S. attorneys and DEA officials both called Lobo one of the biggest cocaine transporters in the international drug trade at the time of his arrest, with evidence showing that Lobos had actually smuggled more than 450 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.
The U.S. attorneys commended the effort of Hernandez at the time to put Lobo behind bars, but that all changed when the anti-Trump political agenda of the Biden-Harris administration took hold.
Lobo, who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison, actually only served 10 years after he engaged in secret negotiations with the U.S. Attorney's Office at the same time that Hernandez was under indictment.
It was an obvious conflict of interest existing, with Lobo highly motivated and therefore incentivized to provide any testimony the prosecutors wanted to harm the very man who put him behind bars, as well as the sharp reduction in his sentence.
And following his release, Lobo, who had been pictured living it up in Miami Beach, drinking a cold cerveza and carousing with a ladyfund after essentially gotten away with murder from help from the Biden Justice Department.
Then another cartel leader who testified against President Hernandez, Mara Diaga, who was convicted a drug lord, who pled guilty to sanctioning 78 murders while leading a billion-dollar drug trafficking syndicate, among the most powerful Central American drug dealers, the so-called Cachino's gang, Mara Diaga artfully played over-eager DEA agents like a fiddle to ensure preferential treatment following his indictment,
despite his undeliable kingpin status.
So Juan Orlando Hernandez's increased enforcement measures against drug cartels, Mara Diaga saw the handwriting on the wall as his assets were being seized and as his Cara Churino gang was under public investigation by the United States.
Mara Diaga got ahead of the issue, turning himself in, and then worked with the feds to throw the leader who had cornered him, cracking down on the cartels under the bus only to protect himself.
Mara Diaga recorded an interview with drug traffickers who alleged to have paid $250,000 in drug money to Hernandez, but the money ultimately could never be tracked and the allegations were never substantiated with serious evidence during the court proceedings.
It was merely testimony from a convicted drug dealer.
It is recognized that the murder rate dropped and corrupt police officers removed from the force during the time Hernandez was in office, not indicators that he was some kind of hidden drug lord.
But those factors, of course, were not taking into consideration during his trial.
None of this, of course, has been reported in the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal.
They try to say that there's some hypocrisy between the fact that President Donald Trump is trying to remove Maduro, a known Marxist anarcho-drug trafficker in Venezuela at the same time he was granting clemency to Hernandez.
But the difference is obviously clear.
Hernandez was framed.
He's innocent.
Juan Orlando Hernandez did nothing wrong.
Of all the Honduran drug criminals involved in engineering the imprisonment of Hernandez, it's particularly difficult to find any public information whatsoever about Mara Diaga's sentencing.
Ziomar Castro's Narco Connections00:12:44
That's because his indictment was sealed on April 14th, 2016, noting that Mara Diaga pled guilty to multiple felonies that called for life sentences in prison.
Still, the plea agreement approved by the infamous Southern District of New York noted that the feds will take steps to ensure his safety and that of his family and loved ones, which may include application to the witness security program, whereby the defendant, his family, and the loved ones, if approved, could be relocated under a new identity.
We have to assume that that is precisely what has happened.
Mara Diago's plea agreement was approved by Obama's appointed Southern District of New York attorney, U.S. attorney, Preet Bahara, a rabid partisan who was fired by President Trump in 2017.
I have revealed right here in the stone zone that the attempts to procure additional details on Mara Diaga's case and his whereabouts filing a Freedom of Information Acts request with the Department of Justice will only result in more questions than answers.
To the extent that non-public responsive records exist without consent, proof of death, or other overriding public interest, disclosure of law enforcement records concerning an individual could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
That's what the Department of Justice wrote to me when I provided or inquired to obtain these records.
Following an appeal that cited the newsworthiness of the case, details regarding this drug lord, the Department of Justice has continued to stonewall me once more, this time under the pretense of not being sure which federal agency could possess the information.
It's basically the bureaucratic runaround.
Based on the information you have provided, I cannot determine the nature of the records you're seeking and therefore cannot recommend a federal entity to which you should submit your request, the Department of Justice wrote to one of my researchers.
It's Mr. Hernandez who signed into law all of those rules and laws that put these drug dealers out of business.
Putting murderers and drug dealers on the witness stand who have cut deals and have them point the finger at former President Hernandez is not proof of anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
That was an actual quote from Hernandez's defense attorney, Renato Stabil.
During the Biden-Harris administration campaign of retribution against President Trump and his allies, including, well, yours truly, they zeroed in on Hernandez and curried favor with his opposition, the far-left Libra Party.
Now, the Libra party was led by Zio Mar Castro, part of the infamous Zelaya family with deep ties to the Venezuelan Marxist narco-drug trafficker, Nicolas Maduro.
These ties did not seem to phase the Biden administration as they saw the opportunity to neutralize a prominent conservative Trump ally in the Central American Honduras.
The Department of Justice filed their indictment on January 27th, just one day after Hernandez left office, and as Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Honduras to visit and attend Ziomar Castro's inauguration to demonstrate that the Biden-Harris administration's personal stamp of approval was on the communists who had seized power over Honduras.
Harris was Ziomar Castro's first meeting as a world leader shortly after her swearing-in ceremony.
Vice President Harris called Ziomar Castro's victory historic as Honduras' first female president and stated that she would work with the communists to increase economic opportunities, combat corruption, and deepen the partnership between the U.S. and Honduras.
When the potential conflict of interest came up as the Biden-Harris administration was embracing the new leftist Honduran president while attempting to imprison her predecessor, former Attorney General Merrick Garland defended the decision.
The new administration of Honduras wants our help, Garland said.
There's no conflict between our doing this kind of work and having good relations in Latin America.
Despite the immense ineptitude, corruption, and belligerence of the Ziomar Castro regime in Honduras, soon the Biden-Harris administration created distance from the colossal disaster that they themselves had helped unfold in Honduras.
A hidden camera video showed two of the witnesses against Hernandez, Lobo and Mara Diaga, the same two drug kingpins who received leniency after testifying falsely against Hernandez, actually negotiating a drug bribe to fund the left-wing Libra party operations.
This was a video with Carlos Zelaya, the former Secretary of Congress, who just happens to be the brother of former Honduras President Mel Zelaya.
That would be Ziomar Castro, the former president.
In one video, Carlos Zealaya was caught speaking about drug money he'd been received by his brother Mel.
They referenced an alleged $500,000 that Mel Zelaya received in bribe money from the cartels.
The traffickers agreed to put together $650,000 for Zelaya to ensure his compliance.
Carlos Zealaya said half must go to the commander, meaning we assume his brother Mel, with the rest of the drug money going into the coffers of the far-left Libra party that would seize control of Honduras.
They also discussed drug cartels providing vehicular transport for Libra party functions.
Once again, Carlos Zelaya was forced to resign in disgrace as the Secretary of Congress as a result of this scandal, and his son, Jose Manuel Zelaya, was forced to resign as Minister of Defense of Honduras.
At the same time, President Castro announced that she would be canceling the very extradition treaty with the United States that Hernandez had signed into law that allowed them to extradite drug traffickers to the United States.
If you look closely at the conviction of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, the whole thing stinks.
What's amazing, however, is that the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, none of these so-called media outlets are interested in this real story.
Castro's officials were seen fraternizing with leaders of the narco trade, but all of that is ignored.
This is the real story of why President Trump reviewed the facts of this case and decided to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez.
I'm Roger Stone.
This is the Stone Cold Truth, and I'll be right back.
The Stone Zone.
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Hypocrites in the mainstream media want to say that President Donald Trump is somehow acting hypocritically because at the very same time he's trying to remove the Marxist narco-drug trafficker Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, he decided to give clemency to former Honduran president Juan Hernandez.
This, of course, is outrageous, the difference being quite clear.
Juan Orlando Hernandez was framed.
We know that officials from the previous government of Zio Mar Castro had been seen publicly fraternizing with leaders of the narco-trade in Latin America and flouting it in the face of U.S. officials.
Only last year, Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya held a meeting with Maduro himself and indicted Venezuelan drug dealer Vladimir Pedrino, drawing the ire of the former U.S. Ambassador to the Honduras, Laura Dugo, who said she was surprised that the Honduran Castro regime was meeting openly with drug traffickers.
The Biden administration has been hoodwinked.
Honduran Foreign Minister Enriqua Raina derided the interference and interventionism of the United States in response to this publicly outrageous display.
I took particular interest in the case of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez because of how the situation mirrored my own when I was framed in a DC courtroom and subjected to a Soviet-style show trial, despite the fact that the final report of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, once we fought in court to get it unsealed, proved that they had found no effort, no Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration,
or any other crime on my part.
So I understand what the witch hunt is like.
Hundreds of DEA thugs working in concert with Zio Mar Castro's police swarmed the home of former President Hernandez and ushered him out in humiliating public display, ripping him from his family.
Does this sound familiar?
They raided my home at 6 o'clock in the morning, a show force in which 29 heavily armed FBI agents in full SWAT gear and brandishing fully automatic M4 assault weapons stormed my home when they simply could have called my lawyer and told me to turn myself in.
But if they had done that, of course, they wouldn't have had the show for CNN.
You see, CNN just happened to have a camera crew 25 feet from my front door.
They actually got an award from the White House Correspondents Association for their incisive investigative reporting that led them to my doorstep.
In fact, at 6.11 in the morning, I was arrested.
But at 6.22, a producer at CNN sent a copy by text of my sealed indictment to one of my lawyers.
And although that indictment had no time stamps or court markings on it, if you looked at the meta data tags, you saw the initials of the Mueller prosecutor who wrote it, and therefore the Mueller prosecutor who leaked it in violation of the law.
That man, the most corrupt prosecutor in U.S. history, Andrew Weissman.
So you can see why I was sympathetic regarding the framing of President Juan Orlando Hernandez and why I was happy to hand over his eloquent letter to President Trump.
It's amazing to me that I've written and said all of this extensively, but no one in the mainstream media wants to cover the facts regarding this illicit trial that took place in the southern district of New York.
Now you have it.
It's all here, right here on the Stone Zone, and I've laid it out chapter and verse.
The most outrageous thing are the claims by internet troones and some even in the media who say that Stone must have been paid millions of dollars for his advocacy for a pardon for Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The truth is I was paid not a penny.
He did nothing wrong, and therefore I was happy to step up in the interests of both justice and mercy.
Now you have the inside story, but here's the silver lining.
In last Sunday's election, the Nationalist Party candidate, pro-U.S. and anti-drug trafficking Tito Asfura, clearly came in first, getting the most votes.
It remains to be seen whether that will be certified by the current government as there is an ongoing effort, we've seen this before, to recount.
But I believe that the forces of good will triumph and therefore I sleep well at night knowing that I recommended a pardon for a man who was completely innocent and I may have helped to elect a pro-U.S. anti-drug trafficking regime in neighboring Honduras.
Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
And thank you for joining us right here in the Stone Zone.
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