Trump's 'dirty trickster' pal hired in apparent power play against Nancy Pelosi

President Donald Trump has a vendetta against the Presidio, a San Francisco national park site with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge that is supported by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump already fired the federal workers who maintain the site — and now one of his longtime lobbyists, a self-described “dirty trickster,” may be helping a Native American group get it.

“In a lobbying disclosure form filed on Monday, Stone’s firm, Drake Ventures, reported that the [Muwekma Ohlone Tribe] had paid it $30,000 for services in the first quarter of this year and another $20,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025,” according to public records obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday.

The report added, “The filing, which doesn’t have any specific information about what the lobbying efforts consist of or whether it’s related to the Presidio, comes nearly two weeks after President Trump terminated the national park’s Board of Trustees.”

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has fought for 45 years to be added to the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ official list of recognized tribes, and has called on Trump to “return the Presidio to indigenous care.” The tribal leaders explicitly argue the Presidio should be turned over to them.

“As the current administration works to eliminate the Presidio Trust as part of its effort to streamline the federal workforce, we stand ready to offer a cost-effective, environmentally responsible solution to filling the stewardship void,” tribal chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh stated in March.

“It’s possible that the hiring of Stone could be part of the tribe’s aggressive efforts to obtain federal recognition, a campaign that prompted a confrontation with members of Congress in January 2023 and has generated conflict with other local tribal leaders,” the San Francisco Chronicle wrote. “Recognition would give the tribe’s members new legitimacy, access to federal funds, the ability to purchase land and potentially even lucrative gaming rights.”

Trump holds a grudge against the Presidio because of Pelosi’s involvement with it, including refusing to appoint a seventh member to the Trust’s board of directors and then firing the six remaining members.

“The 1,500-acre recreation hub is one of the country’s greatest public parks,” the SFGate’s Travel Editor Silas Valentino opined about Trump’s policies toward the Presidio Trust. “It deserves better than neglect from its federal leaders, who now stand to answer for any service disruptions impacting the more than 9 million people who visit each year.”

While it would make sense for Stone to support Trump in a vendetta against the Presidio, he has previously affiliated with the white supremacist Proud Boys group and flashed a white supremacist hand signal. (The Proud Boys, which helped Trump in his 2020-2021 coup attempt, denies being white supremacist despite their racist rhetoric and ties.) When this journalist contacted him about those two issues for Salon in 2019, Stone used an expletive to describe claims that the hand signal is white supremacist, even though he later also said “the gesture is used often by President Trump and is used to connote support for the president in photos of the proudboys [sic] nationwide.”

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