By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
“You’re fired!”
That’s not Donald Trump this time. It’s Roger Ver, the crypto man, tax cheat and expatriate who really, really wants a presidential pardon.
We couldn’t hear if Ver used those precise words when he canned Fort Lauderdale’s Roger Stone as his principal pardon lobbyist in December. But it’s clear Stone got the message.
Ver, sometimes known as “Bitcoin Jesus’’ for his early crypto work, paid President Trump’s longtime political advisor $600,000 early last year to secure the pardon, but Stone couldn’t deliver. And on Jan. 19, after Ver didn’t send another check or make a P2P crypto exchange, Stone filed required federal lobbying paperwork for the fourth quarter of 2025 stating that Ver had terminated him and his firm, Drake Ventures LLC.
Who replaced Stone? Records show that Ver’s $600K payment for this year’s lobbying effort at the White House went to Brian Ballard, founder of Trump’s favorite go-to lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, and Justin Sayfie, a partner in the firm’s Fort Lauderdale office. Last year, they and two other members of Ballard Partners were paid $300,000 by Ver to lobby Trump and the Justice Department. Both times those payments appear to have gone through Ver’s Tallahassee criminal defense lawyer, Chris Kise, who is listed as the lobbying firm’s client on Ver’s behalf.
But that doesn’t mean Stone isn’t still cashing in big on his association with Trump. In addition to lobbying for a couple of Indian tribes and three corporations he signed up last year, Stone is now a duly registered foreign agent with a piece of a one-year, $9-million deal to do public relations and lobbying work for Nigeria. How big a piece is not known.
To comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Stone submitted a statement under oath declaring that he’s working as a salaried, part-time consultant for the DCI Group Az Inc., which apparently owns the Republican-led, Washington, D.C.-based public affairs and strategic communications firm DCI Group.
“Consultant shall assist the Nigerian government through Aster Legal [a Nigerian law firm] in communicating its actions to protect Nigerian’s [sic] Christian communities and maintaining U.S. support in countering West African jihadist groups and other destabilizing elements,” Stone wrote on his FARA statement.
The same day as Stone’s statement, another South Florida resident registered as a salaried foreign agent working part-time for DCI on behalf of Nigeria. Diana London, of Delray Beach, is a Trump supporter and Newsmax columnist.
Nigeria has a mostly Christian south as Muslims dominate the north. Both religious groups are reported to have been the victims of atrocities.
‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ TO DEAD TERRORISTS
DCI managing member Justin Peterson and the managing partner of Aster Legal, which represents Nigeria’s national security advisor Malam Nuhu Ribadu, signed a services contract requiring half of the total fee, or $4.5 million, to be paid up front and the second half to be paid at the sixth-month mark.
The contract says it was effective as of Dec. 12. It was signed by both sides on Dec. 17.
It is not known what effect, if any, that agreement had on events. But on Christmas Day, President Trump announced that on his orders the U.S. had “launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries! I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was…MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
On Sunday, The New York Times published a lengthy story headlined, “How Trump took up the ‘Christian Genocide’ Cause in Nigeria.” It reported the U.S. strike “was the explosive outcome of an intense, yearslong push led by Christian activists, Republican lawmakers and American celebrities seeking U.S. intervention in a long-simmering security crisis in Nigeria.”
The story mentions the $9-million contract with a “Washington lobbying outfit,” but does not name it nor note Stone’s involvement.
Besides Nigeria, Stone’s other lobbying customers appear to be a mixed bag. His top-paying client is the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. You may remember them. Last July, tribe Chairman Marshall Pierite issued a press release that the tribe would “nominate U.S. President Donald J. Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, using its sovereign status to qualify under the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s criteria.”
Since July, Stone’s lobbying reports filed with Congress state that he’s been paid $420,000 to lobby the Executive Office of the President and Bureau of Indian Affairs regarding “Tribe to Tribe trade matters.” He also stated he was lobbying Trump about tribal economic development.
The tribe’s Stone connection may have already paid off. In September, the State Department awarded a tribal subsidiary, Tunica-Biloxi Services LLC, a $10 million design and services contract for an existing chancery in the U.S. Embassy in Singapore, according to USASpending.gov.
Stone’s newest client is the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay, based in Manteca, CA. Lobbying reports he filed show he signed them up late last year and was paid an initial lobbying fee of $20,000.
The reports do not disclose the Muwekma Ohlone’s specific issues or identify the agencies or persons Stone was hired to lobby. But a check of the tribe’s website makes clear that the tribe’s biggest issue is the fact that the U.S. government does not recognize its tribal status. Without that recognition its members do not qualify for benefits that other Native American tribes receive for housing, higher education, medical care and the ability to establish a land trust.
The joint venture Trident Zoetic Company Limited paid Stone $100,000 in the third quarter of 2025 and doubled it in the fourth quarter, for a total of $300,000 last year, according to Stone’s lobbying reports. Here’s how the company describes itself: “Trident Zoetic LLC. is a strategic joint venture between Trident Global Holdings (South Korea) and Zoetic Global (USA), formed to ensure the United States and its allies have secure, long-term access to critical rare earth elements (REEs).”
What they want from the government was not disclosed. Stone’s only listed job apparently is to lobby Trump to obtain it.
Another company called Timios Inc. of Westlake Village, CA, whose business is described as “real estate closing technology,” paid Stone $30,000 in the second quarter of last year to lobby. Stone reported that he wouldn’t be lobbying Congress or any federal agencies. That would seem to leave Trump as his lobbying target, although he doesn’t say that or disclose the specific lobbying issues he’d be addressing.
ANOTHER $100K LOBBYING FEE
Last, but not least as they paid Stone $100,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, is Uinta Basin Railway Holdings LLC, of Winter Park. That seems a strange headquarters for a company that’s looking to build a controversial railway that would connect Utah’s Uinta basin oil fields with the national rail network.
Uinta Basin Railway won an 8-0 victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in May when it overturned a federal appellate court’s decision that rejected approval of the proposed railroad by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on environmental grounds.
President Trump has issued a series of Executive Orders intended to encourage U.S. oil, natural gas and coal production by reducing regulations and fast-tracking licenses.
But the ruling was a blow to environmental groups, arguing that “2-mile-long trains pulling tankers filled with Uinta Basin’s viscous, waxy crude along the Colorado River enroute to Gulf Coast refineries posed a risk to the river and communities along the tracks if the tankers derailed,” the Colorado Sun reported.
The ruling will return the matter to the Surface Transportation Board, whose members were appointed by Trump.
Stone’s report regarding his work for the Uinta Basin Railway, filed Jan. 20, says his specific lobbying issues are “advocacy of federal support for the construction and funding of a railroad in Utah.” His duties are to lobby the White House and Capitol Hill.
It should be noted that on each of Stone’s Senate lobbying reports he properly disclosed that in 2019 he was convicted of “obstruction of proceeding, false statements, witness tampering. Mr. Stone received a Presidential Pardon for all these offenses in 2020.”
More precisely, Stone was found guilty by a jury of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He was also found guilty of five counts of making false statements to Congress, and tampering with a witness, Randy Credico.
Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison in February 2020 but didn’t do a day behind bars. Days before he was to report to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. Trump later pardoned Stone, effectively preventing him from ever going to jail for those offenses.
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