Roger Stone said he is planning to file a defamation lawsuit against Facebook after he was kicked off of the social media platform.
Stone, 67, claimed on Thursday that Facebook’s reasoning for de-platforming him is “not true” and that he can prove it, according to Fox News. Facebook announced a day earlier that Stone was booted because it tied him to a network of deceptive accounts spreading false information.
“They’ll have a chance to prove it. Words on a press release are assertions and accusations. It is false,” Stone said. “It is put up or shut up time very soon. They’ll get a chance to show me the illegitimate sites. They don’t exist. I don’t own hundreds of Facebook pages and I never have.”
The group of pages that Stone was allegedly tied to were mostly active between 2015 and 2017, and “the majority of these accounts have been dormant” since. Facebook’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, noted that the company started looking into the network as a part of an investigation regarding the Proud Boys’ attempt to rejoin the platform despite getting banned.
The network included 54 Facebook accounts, 50 pages, and 4 accounts on Instagram.
Stone, a longtime Republican operative and ally of President Trump, is expected to report to prison next week after his bid to postpone his prison sentence until September was denied. He was found guilty of making false statements, witness tampering, and obstructing a congressional investigation.
He called Facebook’s banishment of him an “attempted character assassination to derail clemency.”
“This Facebook thing is designed to depict me in a negative light,” Stone added. “I don’t think it is coincidental.”
Trump has teased a possible pardon for Stone but has yet to grant his longtime confidant his wish.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
