Roger Stone is leading an effort to free Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who remains sequestered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been given diplomatic asylum after the controversial website published thousands of confidential defense and diplomatic documents in 2010.
The call comes after a recent visit to London during which Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, visited the Ecuadorian embassy and left his contact information for Assange, who is in hiding in an effort to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced allegations of sexual abuse, The Guardian reported.
"My inchoate courtesy call was, in part, to 'punk' some in British media who persist in the falsehood that Assange is a Russian agent and WikiLeaks a Russian front, rather than a legitimate news organization," Stone wrote in an article published in The Daily Caller and the Daily Express.
Stone is referring to allegations that he had a communications backchannel with WikiLeaks during the 2016 elections, with investigations between Russia and the Trump campaign zeroing in on his relationship with Assange, according to The Daily Beast.
Last September, Stone testified to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee that he and Assange did not communicate during that period, noting that his comments regarding WikiLeaks disclosures about Hillary Clinton "were from a keen reading of Assange's own tweets and public comments, not from any inside or advance knowledge," according to the Daily Express.
Stone also noted that he had been in communication with an American journalist who "could confirm that WikiLeaks had obtained, and intended to publish, damaging Clinton emails."
The identity of the journalist was later leaked by internal staff and the journalist was axed as a radio talk show host.
"Human damage has been caused by the cynical manipulations and brazen deceit of the Russia collusion hoaxsters around Hillary Clinton," Stone noted, per The Daily Caller. "In this vein, my visit to Julian Assange's cramped quarters was, above all, to protest the unjust, inhumane persecution to which Assange is being perpetually-subjected."
According to Stone, the Swedish charges against Assange have been abandoned and U.K. bail charges would soon be heard on petition for dismissal.
However, he said that authorities were not concerned that there were "no legitimate legal grounds to prosecute Assange."
In light of this, he is calling on Trump to take action.
"While officials in charge of the Trump Justice Department and CIA grotesquely parrot Hillary Clinton's absurd slandering of WikiLeaks as a 'tool of Russian intelligence,' President Trump himself had nothing but praise during his campaign," Stone said, per The Daily Caller.
"The Donald Trump I know is a generous, compassionate, humane and, above all, fair man. As his steadfast, loyal, decades-long supporter, with all I have I implore him: Mr. President, free Julian Assange!"