Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said Wednesday evening that he has spoken with both Capitol police and the FBI about death threats allegedly tossed his way by right-wing operative Roger Stone.
The longtime New York Democrat said he only found out about Stone’s reported assassination talk targeting both him and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) through news reports after it was first reported by Mediaite last week.
“It was a surprise to me,” Nadler told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday. “I just found out a few days ago ... I saw it on Mediate.”
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The publication received audio purportedly of Stone telling former NYPD officer Sal Greco, “It’s time to do it. It’s either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election.”
“They need to get the message,” he added. “Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit anymore.”
Nadler notably threatened to investigate then-President Donald Trump’s commutation of Stone’s prison sentence in 2020.
Swalwell on Wednesday said Stone targeted him because “I’m one of Trump’s loudest critics”—and called him out for attempting to intimidate the former president’s opponents.
“The Roger Stone assassination plot recording may seem like the ravings of a wannabe gangster. It’s not,” Swalwell said. “This is what Trump and his real-life thugs do: They try to intimidate opponents and will always choose violence over voting.”
Nadler said both agencies are conducting investigations, though the FBI has declined to comment publicly on the threats and a spokesperson for the USCP said it does not discuss ongoing investigations “for safety reasons.”
Stone, for his part, has denied that the voice in the audio recording was his, blaming Mediaite for amplifying artificial intelligence “manipulation.”
“Total nonsense. I’ve never said anything of the kind more AI manipulation [sic],” he told Mediaite. “You asked me to respond to audios that you don’t let me hear and you don’t identify a source for. Absurd.”
Greco also pushed back against the report, writing on X that it was “nothing more than clickbait political fodder.”
