This piece was originally published by Right Wing Watch on January 25, 2019, the day on which Roger Stone was arrested and taken into federal custody. He is due to be sentenced on February 20. Federal prosecutors recommended a sentence of seven to nine years. Today, President Donald J. Trump tweeted that the recommendation was “a horrible and very unfair situation,” pronouncing it “a miscarriage of justice.” The Department of Justice promptly signaled that it would seek a lighter sentence. Two prosecutors promptly withdrew from the case; one of them resigned from the Justice Department altogether.

Roger Stone, who was arrested and charged on Friday morning, has a long career as a right-wing Republican self-described dirty trickster, whose “do-whatever-it-takes” ethos made him a perfect fit for the amoral, bullying campaign of Donald Trump, and a hero to the trolling, conspiracy-theory-promoting crowd he helped rally around Trump.

Stone has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and said he would never buckle to pressure from Mueller to turn on Trump. While the White House has tried to distance Trump from Stone, that won’t be so easy; for one, there’s a Netflix documentary entirely about how Stone helped Trump take the GOP nomination and White House. And since his arrest, Stone has been claiming that he is being persecuted for his 40-year friendship with Trump.

Stone’s partnership with Infowars and Alex Jones—who Stone called “the single most important voice in the alternative conservative media”—gave him a platform from which to promote conspiracy theories designed to inflame right-wing activists and boost Trump as candidate and later as president.

Here are some nuggets from Right Wing Watch coverage of Stone during the Trump era: