One of Donald Trump’s county campaign chairs in New Hampshire lost his job as a police officer after threatening to kill his colleagues in a shooting spree, murder the department chief and rape the chief’s wife in retaliation for his suspension over his relationship with a high school girl, according to a newly released report from an internal affairs investigation.
Jonathan Stone, who is currently a second-term state representative, was announced as Trump’s Sullivan County chair by his campaign on June 27, 2023. The coup-attempting former president first came to know Stone during Trump’s 2016 run, when Stone gave him an inscribed AR-15 assault rifle at a campaign stop.
At that point, it had been a decade since Stone had lost his job with the Claremont Police Department, which agreed to a settlement negotiated by the local police union that kept the investigative records secret. The documents were ordered to be released last week by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in a lawsuit by a local newspaper over Stone’s objections.
Stone, who opened a gun shop after losing his job as a police officer, did not reply to HuffPost queries.
Stephen Stepanek, Trump’s New Hampshire campaign chair, said he knew nothing about Stone’s background until seeing news accounts.
“I just found out about it this morning,” Stepanek said Wednesday. “He’s been a Trump supporter for a long time, and he’s been a state representative, and he had, as far as we were concerned, what looked like a great background.”
Stepanek said Stone’s future with the campaign has not been determined.
“We haven’t made any decisions at this point,” he said, adding that he expected the campaign’s top aides at Trump’s South Florida country club would be taking the lead. “I think it will be handled by Mar-a-Lago, in consultation with me.”
Campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles did not respond to HuffPost queries.
According to the files released last week, the original 2006 investigation was launched to look into allegations that Stone was involved in a relationship with a 16-year-old high school girl. Department officials decided to suspend Stone for five days and ordered him not to contact her anymore.
Stone, who, according to the files, had already displayed a temper, began telling co-workers about his plans for violence.
One police co-worker told investigators she had heard Stone make threats to a colleague.
“That conversation included discussion about backing a truck up to the back door, kicking the door open and going on a shooting spree,” the co-worker said. “While Jon was under investigation for something, he said he was going to tie up the chief, make the chief watch him as he pillages the chief’s wife and children.”
A department detective told investigators: “I recall Jon saying he was going to go to the chief’s house and rape the chief’s wife, and kids, and shoot the chief.”
The investigators concluded that Stone should not keep his job.
“The seriousness of threatening to kill command staff officers, raping the chief’s wife, tying people up and going ‘postal’ are violations at the most serious level. Stone’s conduct goes so far beyond what is expected of a professional police officer that [the] only appropriate resolution is his removal from office,” investigators wrote.
In 2016, Stone, who by then had opened Black Ops Arms in Claremont, New Hampshire, presented Trump with an AR-15 rifle inscribed with the numbers “1-4-5,” signifying that Trump was his first choice to become the 45th president.
Stone has remained in Trump’s camp since. Trump named him one of his 14 New Hampshire county and city chairs last June and praised him from the stage during a rally in Claremont five months later.
It is unclear what came of the assault rifle Stone gave Trump in 2016.
Trump, who lost New Hampshire in both 2016 and during his 2020 reelection bid, won the state’s primary again three months ago, clearing the way to his third straight Republican presidential nomination despite facing four separate criminal prosecutions.
Two of those are based on his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his followers attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to reinstall him as president.
A federal indictment could go to trial as early as late August, depending on the timing of a Supreme Court ruling on his claim that he is immune from prosecution. A Georgia state prosecution based on his attempt to overturn his election loss in that state could also start later this year.
A New York state prosecution on charges that he falsified business records to hide hush money payments in the days before the 2016 election is to begin jury selection on Monday, while a second federal prosecution based on his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago has not yet been set for trial.
In 2023, a New York jury found that Trump had sexually penetrated writer E. Jean Carroll against her will in an incident in the 1990s, finding him civilly liable for sexual abuse. The federal judge in the case later clarified that Trump’s actions were rape in the “common modern parlance.”