The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Roger Stone on Friday, alleging that the longtime ally of former President Donald Trump owes about $2 million in unpaid federal taxes.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, alleges that Stone and his wife, Nydia, used a commercial entity – Drake Ventures – in order to “shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle despite owing nearly $2 million in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties,” the lawsuit says.
The suit alleges that the couple underpaid their income tax by more than $1.5 million from 2007 until 2011 and separately alleges Stone also owes more than $400,000 for not fully paying his tax bill in 2018.
“They used Drake Ventures to receive payments that are payable to Roger Stone personally, pay their personal expenses, shield their assets, and avoid reporting taxable income to the IRS,” the lawsuit alleges.
Stone calls the lawsuit “politically motivated.”
Stone, who briefly worked on Trump’s presidential campaign, was indicted in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Stone was convicted in 2019 on seven counts of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to Congress and sentenced to more than three years in prison, but his sentence was commuted by Trump in July 2020.
Stone boasted during the 2016 campaign that he was in contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange through a trusted intermediary and hinted at inside knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release more than 19,000 emails hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee. But Stone denied any wrongdoing and consistently criticized the case against him as politically motivated.
“The Internal Revenue Service is well aware of the fact that my three-year battle for freedom against the corrupted Mueller investigation has left me destitute,” Stone told The Associated Press. “They’re well aware that I have no assets and that their lawsuit is politically motivated. It’s particularly interesting that my tax attorneys were not told of this action, filed at close of business on a Friday. The American people will learn, in court, that I am on the verge of bankruptcy and that there are no assets for the government to take.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
