his convictions. Trump pardoned Stone on December 23, 2020. Early life and political work Stone was born on August 27, 1952, in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Gloria Rose (Corbo) and Roger J. Stone. He grew up in the community of Vista, part of the town of Lewisboro, New York, on the Connecticut border. His mother was the president of Meadow Pond Elementary School PTA, a Cub Scout den mother, and occasionally a small-town reporter; his father "Chubby" (also Roger J. Stone) was a well driller and sometime chief of the Vista volunteer Fire Department. He has described his family as middle-class, blue-collar Catholics. His ancestry includes Hungarian and Italian. Stone said that as an elementary school student during the 1960 presidential election, he broke into politics to further John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign: "I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays ... It was my first political trick." When he was a junior and vice president of student government at John Jay High School in northern Westchester County, New York, he manipulated the ouster of the student government president and succeeded him. Stone recalled how he ran for election as president for his senior year: "I built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket. Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school to run against me. You think that's mean? No, it's smart." Given a copy of Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, Stone became drawn to conservatism as a child and a volunteer in Goldwater's 1964 campaign. In 2007, Stone indicated he was a staunch conservative but with libertarian leanings. As a student at George Washington University in 1972, Stone invited Jeb Stuart Magruder to speak at a Young Republicans Club meeting, then asked Magruder for a job with Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President. Magruder agreed and Stone then left college to work for the committee. Career 1970s: Nixon campaign, Watergate and Reagan 1976 Stone's political career began in earnest on the 1972 Nixon campaign, with activities such as contributing money to a possible rival of Nixon in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance and then slipping the receipt to the Manchester Union-Leader. Eventually Magruder and Herbert Porter hired Stone to spy on rival presidential campaigns during the 1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Stone subsequently hired Michael McMinoway to