Last weekend, Roger Stone, the former Trump and Nixon adviser who has been subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating January 6, visited the QAnon cult that has been holed up in Dallas for the last six weeks waiting for the resurrection of John F. Kennedy and his son.
Stone met with the group after he spoke at a conspiracy-focused conference taking place in the city on Saturday, he told VICE News. He met with the group after one of its members recognized him in the bar at the Hyatt hotel, where many group adherents have been staying.
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“I did meet with the group after one of the members asked me to drop by a session they were holding,” Stone said, adding that he spoke about JFK given he has written several books on the subject.
Stone said he disputed the claim that JFK was still alive, but shared his questions about the president’s assassination.
“I made it clear that I believe President John F Kennedy is dead but that it is indisputable that all of the facts regarding his murder are not known as evidenced by the fact that President Biden decided to keep certain documents regarding the assassination classified yet again,” Stone told VICE News.
Stone’s meeting with the group was first flagged in a group audio chat on Telegram on Monday night by Stephen Tenner, an actor who attended the Capitol riot.
Tenner is one of the key lieutenants of Michael Brian Protzman, the leader of the QAnon cult camping out in Dallas who is known to his followers as Negative48. Stone told VICE News that he may have met Protzman but he didn’t know him.
“There was an event and [Stone] wound up here,” Tenner said in the chat. “He said he heard that we were here and he wanted to meet us, he knew what we were about. Originally Michael wanted us to be quiet about it, not share pictures and stuff.”
Protzman did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment about the meeting.
When asked why Stone visited the group, Tenner said it was “all part of the movie,” in reference to the group’s belief that everything happening in the U.S. right now is part of an elaborate hoax that will soon be unmasked when former President Donald Trump returns as president.
And that could happen as soon as this Sunday, according to the group, because Trump is visiting Dallas as part of “The History Tour,” a series of events the former president is conducting with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. So far, crowds at these events have been considerably smaller than Trump promised.
Protzman’s group, which still numbers in the dozens even though it’s been over six weeks since they first congregated in Dallas to see JFK resurrected, plans to attend Trump’s Dallas event en masse.
In audio chats this week on Telegram, members of the group have been speculating on what Trump’s arrival in Dallas will mean, with some predicting that he will fly in on Air Force One, signaling his reinstatement as president as well as the second coming of Christ.
Protzman has claimed in recent weeks that he has been in direct contact with Trump. He has also claimed he was in Dallas at the behest of Q, the anonymous leader of the QAnon movement who claimed to be a high-ranking government insider.
As with all of his claims, Protzman has provided no evidence beyond his use of numerology that he claims means he has supernatural powers.
While the group’s size has shrunk, a core group of followers remains. Many of their family and friends, however, have continued to work to try and get them to return home. As VICE News reported recently, these actions have included gaining guardianship over some members and having them admitted for mental health evaluations.
The group is now also trying to interfere with the treatment of members who have contracted COVID, and leadership is actively trying to persuade at least two members to discharge themselves from hospital and take alternative medication such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
One woman logged into the Telegram chat group from her hospital bed to say she had been put on oxygen, though Protzman and the group criticized her and suggested ways to get her out of the hospital.
In fact, because so many people called the hospital to try and get her out, police had to be called to guard the hospital. An update posted in the Telegram group on Monday said the woman was now receiving ivermectin and was on her way home.
While this cult has been widely ridiculed, Stone’s appearance and the upcoming Trump event in Dallas will be seen by those who have remained with Protzman as further proof that they are on the right path, and that any day now the baseless prediction that JFK will return is about to come true.
