Longtime Donald Trump confidante and political operative Roger Stone Jr. has added Haiti to his growing portfolio of foreign governments he represents.

Haiti’s transitional government, led by Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, has retained Stone’s firm for as much as $780,000 a year, bringing on the veteran Republican strategist, who is based in Fort Lauderdale, as the government faces pressure to organize Haiti’s first general elections in more than a decade amid escalating gang violence, kidnappings and the weekly return of deported nationals from the United States.

Stone registered his work through Drake Ventures LLC, the Fort Lauderdale-based consulting and lobbying firm he owns with his wife, Nydia. The Justice Department filing registering the company to represent Haiti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship was submitted Sept. 16.

The agreement does not say whether Stone’s lobbying will focus on elections, security assistance or immigration, including the more than 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. now vulnerable to deportation after the Supreme Court cleared the way this summer for the Trump administration to terminate Haiti’s designation for Temporary Protected Status.

Instead, the filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act broadly describes Stone’s work as “issue advocacy” before the U.S. government and says it will include “political activities,” without specifying the policies Haiti intends to pursue.

Under the agreement, Drake Ventures will receive a $65,000 monthly retainer, payable in quarterly installments of $195,000, amounting to $780,000 a year. The filing says the agreement was signed by Stone and Haiti’s foreign minister, Raina Forbin. Forbin, who is accompanying the prime minister at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, did not respond to a request for comment.

The contract runs for 12 months, through Sept. 2, 2027, and automatically renews for am additional one-year period unless either side gives 30 days notice of termination.

Politically connected figure

Stone is the latest figure politically connected to the Trump administration to enter Haiti’s orbit. Drone-deploying security contractors linked to Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and former Navy Seal who founded the private military company Blackwater, have been assisting a task force overseen by the prime minister’s office. Prince has also been linked to a controversial 10-year deal with Haitian authorities to collect taxes at Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. Haitian authorities have yet to publicly acknowledge the link.

Last week, the White House nominated Austin Holmes, a Florida businessman, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Haiti, a post typically held by State Department career diplomats. At a Senate hearing on Haiti in February, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma at the time who is now secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described Holmes as having “a tremendous amount of knowledge about Haiti” and someone he has known for 15 or 16 years.

Haiti has also hired another Republican with close ties to the administration to lobby on its behalf.

In February 2025, Carlos Trujillo, a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, registered his firm, Continental Strategy, to represent Haiti. Trujillo, who is close to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said in his foreign-agent filing that the firm would work to assist Haiti’s recovery, raise its profile and engage U.S. policymakers.

The initial agreement fee was listed as $35,000 a month. But a filing from earlier this year shows that the Caribbean nation has paid considerably more.

According to a March 2026 filing, Haiti’s government wired $314,940 to Continental Strategy for work between Oct. 17, 2025, and Feb. 5. The filing listed two political activities : a Nov. 5, 2025, email to the office of Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, to discuss a congressional delegation visit to Haiti, and an email on Feb. 6 to thank another Florida Republican, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, “for his leadership” after he helped secure funding for Haiti’s fledgling army.

‘Exorbitant amount of money’

The Stone contract has immediately drawn criticism in some Haitian circles. André Michel, a lawyer and political leader who belongs to a newly formed coalition of Haitian political parties and organizations, called the agreement “an absolute scandal,” saying it is “an exorbitant amount for a country like Haiti” and “a waste of public funds.”

Michel linked the lobbying contract and its timing to broader concerns about the government, including its refusal to rescind a controversial decree protecting senior government officials from prosecution in regular courts. The decree was adopted in December by the now-dissolved Transitional Presidential Council and has drawn strong criticism from civil society groups as well as the recently departed ambassadors of France and Canada.

“One can understand why the Fils-Aimé government is upholding the decree,” Michel said. “The government has done nothing to resolve the humanitarian and security crises, yet they are spending money just to stay in power.”

The criticism comes as Fils-Aimé faces mounting political pressure over his handling of the ongoing transition and preparation for elections by the country’s Provisional Electoral Council. The first round of voting is scheduled for Dec. 13, but it’s increasingly looking doubtful amid a lagging voter registration process, extended deadlines, lack of communication and ongoing gang violence.

In a statement Sunday, the Coalition des Forces Républicaines, which claims to represent 44 political parties and groupings and includes Michel, accused the government of failing to establish the political and security conditions necessary for credible elections.

The coalition cited the more than 6 million Haitians facing acute hunger and the record number of people who are internally displaced by gangs, saying the country “is experiencing its most severe humanitarian crisis in its history,” and the inability of Fils-Aimé’s government to confront the problem constitutes a major complication for the electoral process.

“Prime Minister Fils-Aimé, in office since May 22, has over the past seven months failed in his principal mission of restoring the security environment necessary to organize free, fair and democratic elections by the end of 2026,” the group said.

The organization also accused the prime minister of launching his own political platform, a decision it says that “undermines the confidence of political actors and civil society” in the electoral process.

“By having at his disposal the machinery of the state and all of the government ministries, he becomes a formidable adversary to other political groups participating in the electoral process,” the group said. They accused the prime minister of violating the National Pact for Stability and the Organization of Elections, which he signed with political parties when he took full control of the government in May.

The political platform Viktwa, or Victory, was created by individuals close to the prime minister, including one of his chief confidantes, Wilner Joseph, who unsuccessfully ran in the 2015-16 election to represent Port-au-Prince in the lower Chamber of Deputies and received less than 900 votes.

The platform brings together a coalition of 52 political parties, and has announced Joseph as its presidential candidate. Though campaigning hasn’t officially opened, Joseph has been crisscrossing the country by helicopter promoting his candidacy. During a recent visit to Gonaïves, whose lower areas are controlled by gangs, he drew criticism after saying Haiti’s founding father, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, was born there rather than in Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, outside Cap-Haïtien.

Fils-Aimé, who is at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, could not be reached for comment. He has not publicly addressed concerns raised by political parties about whether he supports Joseph’s candidacy, or explained the decision to hire Stone.

Stone’s other engagements

Haiti is the latest addition to Stone’s expanding lobbying portfolio. He has served as a consultant to the Washington-based lobbying company DCI Group AZ in their efforts to lobby for The Bahamas, Nigeria and the southeast Asia nation of Myanmar.

Stone also registered this summer to represent the government of San Luis Potosi, a state in north-central Mexico. For a total of $375,000, he provided the economic development agency of the Mexican state with “government and public relations counsel ... related to trade and economic development, including in connection with U.S. government officials.”

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a France-based Iranian dissident group, also reported securing time on the weekly radio program The Roger Stone Show, according to foreign-agent records. The group had once been labeled as a terrorist organization by the U.S. — a classification that was removed in 2012.

Late last year, amid growing Republican and White House rhetoric against Somalia and Somali migrants in the United States, the African country’s embassy engaged the services of Virginia-based lobbying firm Arsenal Government and Public Affairs Group to have meetings with U.S. officials and secure spots in TV news to raise awareness among the American public of Somalian policy views.

The lobbying firm, its foreign-agent registration notes, assembled a team that was co-led by Stone. Arsenal receives $44,000 a month for its services, although how much Stone specifically makes is unclear.

Like Haiti, Somalia is also among a dozen countries whose TPS designation has been revoked by the Trump administration.

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