ALBANY – Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno fired Republican political consultant Roger Stone yesterday for the “despicable” comments he allegedly made in a bizarre and threatening call to Gov. Spitzer‘s 83-year-old father.
Bruno (R-Rensselaer), the target of a dirty tricks scandal that has enveloped the Spitzer administration, said Stone’s comments were “despicable enough” to warrant his dismissal, despite Stone’s claim to be the victim of what he called “Spitzer’s ultimate dirty trick.”
Bruno, who hired Stone in June as a $20,000-a-month consultant to the Senate GOP campaign committee, said the longtime political operative “has agreed to resign and end his relationship with us at our request.
“We are not going to allow this incident to become a distraction or to be used as an excuse to hamper people from getting at the truth,” Bruno continued, referring to the dirty tricks scandal.
Stone, who has represented Donald Trump and billionaire independent gubernatorial hopeful Thomas Golisano, was accused of making the threat in an obscenity-laced Aug. 6 phone call to Bernard Spitzer’s Manhattan office.
Stone, a onetime adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, has a long and controversial history with the GOP.
In 1996, it was reported that Stone had placed ads, featuring revealing photos of him and his wife, in swinger magazines looking for couples and single men to have sex with him and his wife. Stone claimed the ads were placed by someone with a grudge against him.
Jeffrey Moerdler, a lawyer for Spitzer’s father, notified the Senate Investigations Committee and the state Ethics Commission of the threat Tuesday, and included a recording in which Stone is allegedly heard warning, “You will be subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Committee on Investigations on your shady campaign loans.
“You will be compelled by the Senate sergeant at arms. If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany.
“And there is not a God damn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-s— son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you.
“You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all,” the message continued.
Moerdler also said a private investigation firm, aided by a caller-identification system on the elder Spitzer’s phone, had traced the call to Stone’s Central Park South apartment.
Stone initially called the recording “a total fabrication” and suggested he was the victim of a plot hatched by Gov. Spitzer and his Democratic allies. He claims they want to deflect attention from the scandal in which top aides to the governor used the State Police to gather supposedly damaging information on Bruno.
Stone also claimed yesterday he was “at the theater catching the play ‘Nixon and Frost’ ” on Aug. 6 at 9:57 p.m., when the call was allegedly placed.
However, New York magazine reported that Stone couldn’t have attended the play because it wasn’t staged that night.
Stone responded, “My error,” and said he realized he had seen the play two days after the call allegedly was made.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders sought to use the Stone scandal to deflect attention from the probe by Senate Republicans of the plot against Bruno.
“The tape says it all. If there’s still any doubt out there that the Senate Republican ‘investigation’ is anything other than a blatantly partisan attempt to inflict damage on the governor and his family, this tape should clear that up,” said state Democratic chairwoman June O’Neill.