Frank Parlato
As the journalist who broke the NXIVM branding story and played a role in exposing Keith Raniere’s criminal enterprise, I want to explain the role of Roger Stone and NXIVM.
In 2006, NXIVM hired Stone as a political consultant. The group was entirely unknown then. It was led by Keith Raniere and funded by two sisters, Clare and Sara Bronfman, heirs of the Seagram liquor fortune.
Raniere said he wanted Stone to lobby in Albany to help his company grow. What he really wanted was for Stone to use his connections to help them harm their enemies—to get Raniere’s ex-girlfriend, Toni Natalie, and former consultant Joe O’Hara, and cult watcher Rick Ross, indicted.
They were willing to pay $1 million or more in donations to the officials who could secure the indictments.
Stone refused. He told them he wouldn’t help them “buy” indictments—that conditioning political contributions on governmental actions was bribery.
“They appeared to be a self-help group conducting classes for what appeared to be middle-aged housewives seeking to build their self-esteem,” Stone told Newsweek. “I worked for them for two months, in which I convinced them that they needed a lawyer, not a lobbyist.”
In “The Lost Women of NXIVM,” a documentary I produced for Investigation Discovery, Stone elaborated on his impressions of the organization and its leader:
“They were out of touch with the way things really worked. And they wanted to start buying politicians. They knew the system was rigged. They are not wrong about that.”
During the approximately two months or so he worked for NXIVM, Stone had only one meeting with Raniere.
Stone’s Warnings
Stone advised him that if he wanted to change NXIVM’s image as a cult, stop acting like one. The bowing before Ranierein classes, calling him Vanguard.
He also suggested that his followers not go around saying Raniere was the smartest man in the world based on a dubious IQ test taken two decades earlier.
He recommended several consultants to work for them, including the best media consultant money could buy. I began working for NXIVM in September 2007 at $75,000 a month.
But by the time I got started, Stone had quit. He did so amicably, unlike many others who came into Raniere’s orbit and left. This was 2007.
From my early days on the job, Stone would call me and ask sarcastically, “How’s the world’s smartest man?”
He didn’t buy Raniere’s act. The more he thought about it, the more he felt there was something amiss.
“You’d better check out if Raniere is stealing from the trust funds of Clare and Sara Bronfman.”
As Stone observed in “The Lost Women of NXIVM”:
“I met the Bronfman sisters. I met several other trust fund children, and I could see that they were being milked. And that they were footing the bill for a lifestyle of the circle of people surrounding Keith Raniere.”
Stone was the first person to warn me about Raniere. In the end, Stone was right.
The Manson Comparison
In The Lost Women of NXIVM, Stone described NXIVM’s leader:
“Raniere had like a burning intensity. But at the same time, he was arrogant, he was haughty, he was a know it all. He liked to pontificate. He didn’t want to hear what anybody else had to say.”
I asked Stone: “Did you ever get the sense… that he might have been willing to do something criminal like murder?”
His answer: “I did meet Raniere one time. And he kind of reminded me of Charles Manson. In the sense that the inner circle was just completely obsequious. Whatever Keith wanted, whatever he said. He said ‘kill,’ I think they would have killed. That’s why when the woman disappeared in Alaska, it crossed my mind that there may have been foul play. I did think he was evil. But I thought he was just financially corrupt. It turned out to be far worse than I ever thought it would be.”
The woman who disappeared in Alaska was Kristin Snyder, 35, last seen in Anchorage being ejected from a NXIVM Intensive after claiming Raniere had gotten her pregnant. Her body has never been found.
What I Found
In December 2007, I was asked to find a $5 million loan for the Bronfmans for a Los Angeles real estate project. When I investigated it, I discovered they had already invested $26 million. After two years, not a single home had been completed.
Worse: the Bronfmans didn’t own the property. They had nothing in writing. Nancy Salzman, the president of NXIVM, was the owner of record, along with a developer described as “Keith’s best friend.”
I recovered the Bronfmans’ ownership. Then I retained a forensic accountant to conduct an audit and determined that $10 million was missing.
All told, I recovered $26 million for the Bronfmans. Raniere authorized a $1 million payment to me. I started looking into the “other” $66 million he’d lost in commodities. Raniere fired me and demanded the million back.
Stone had warned me Raniere was stealing from the Bronfmans. The evidence supported that.
The Retaliation
I put the $1 million into escrow, awaiting a civil resolution. Instead of suing me for it, Raniere had Clare Bronfman file a criminal complaint.
The DOJ indicted me. The charges were ultimately dropped. But the feds kept the million.
So the work of saving the Bronfmans $26 million—I never got paid for it. And they, because they came after me, went to prison.
All over $1 million. Raniere lost it all. It was a years-long legal war funded by Bronfman money and directed by Raniere. But it backfired.
The Frank Report
In 2015, I launched the Frank Report and began investigating NXIVM in earnest. In June 2017, I broke the story that Raniere was operating a secret group called DOS that branded and blackmailed women.
Roger Stone provided information and key media contacts.
Stone understood the significance of what DOS represented.
He said in “The Lost Women of NXIVM”:
“I think it was interesting that when women were admitted to this secret circle of the cult, they were required to give blackmail material in case they ever got inklings of leaving the cult. So again, a person who is capable of that is capable of anything.”
The story went worldwide. Federal investigators moved in.
Stone provided resources and information that contributed to the successful takedown of what turned out to be a vicious criminal organization.
In March 2018, Raniere was arrested in Mexico.
I was at Roger Stone’s house when we received the news. I gave interviews to major publications from his parlor that day.
Raniere went to trial. A Brooklyn federal jury convicted him.
Judge Nicholas Garaufis sentenced him to 120 years in prison. Clare Bronfman received 81 months. Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman, Allison Mack, and bookkeeper Kathy Russell pleaded guilty. Mack got three years. Lauren Salzman and Kathy Russell got probation.
Stone was right about all of it.
What Neither of Us Knew
In 2007, when Stone and I were in Albany, the more sinister aspects of NXIVM were well hidden. The human branding, the blackmail, the DOS master-slave structure—none of that existed yet. DOS didn’t begin until 2015, eight years after Stone quit and seven years after Raniere fired me.
I lived in Albany for three months. I worked closely with NXIVM members. I never saw evidence of a sex cult. Stone, who spent one afternoon in a classroom and met Raniere once, certainly didn’t see it either.
Stone did sense was a financial scam. He saw a man who would ask a political consultant to “buy” an indictment. He saw the warning signs of a criminal enterprise.
The Deeper Connections
Internet trolls and some of the left-leaning media have tried to tie Roger Stone to NXIVM.
Meanwhile, connections that ran deeper go unmentioned.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s father, Doug Rutnik, worked as a NXIVM consultant for months—far longer than Stone. Her stepmother was a member of the organization. NXIVM flourished in Gillibrand’s district for years.
Her statement to the media: “I never heard of them.”
Albany District Attorney David Soares was a true supporter of NXIVM. His office pursued indictments against NXIVM’s perceived enemies—exactly the kind of arrangement Stone refused to facilitate.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign accepted tens of thousands of dollars in NXIVM money, bundled illegally. The Clinton Global Initiative invited NXIVM members Nancy Salzman, Clare, and Sara Bronfman to participate.
The Dalai Lama accepted $2 million to speak at a NXIVM event and gave Raniere a white scarf on stage. He wrote a foreword for one of Raniere’s books.
Actresses Kristin Kreuk, and Allison Mack joined NXIVM and used their fame to promote the organization.
Yet Stone—not Clinton, not Gillibrand, not the Dalai Lama—gets labeled a NXIVM associate. The hypocrisy is obvious.
The Record
To say Roger Stone was part of NXIVM is false.
To say he helped take them down is accurate.
I know, because I was there.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
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