Roger Stone this morning came to the defense of John Haggerty, calling Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s indictment of the Queens operative “outrageous” and insisting that Mayor Bloomberg would have faced a $15 million to $20 million GOP primary last year had it not been for Haggerty’s efforts.

Stone’s comments came during a radio interview with Curtis Sliwa, who asked how it could possibly have been legal for Haggerty to (according to Vance) spend $600,000 of the $750,000 he received from the state Independence Party for his poll watching services to buy out his brother’s share of their father’s house.

Stone replied:

“It depends on the documents, but if as I believe the agreement between John Haggerty and the Independence Party gave Haggerty the discretion to spend that money and achieve the goal…people don’t remember how important white turnout was in the outer boroughs in a very, very narrow election win for Mike Bloomberg. If Haggerty had the full discretion to spend that money then I don’t think there’s any crime here.”

Stone, as you’ll recall, is running the “Manhattan Madam” (Kristin Davis) as an independent candidate for governor. But he’s also a supporter of GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, whose campaign manager, Michael Caputo, is a Stone protégé. Haggerty is now working for Paladino, who defended the operative after his indictment and refused to jettison him.

Also, I’m not sure if there really was ever a real threat that Bloomberg would face a primary for the GOP line.

The five county chairs initially balked about giving the mayor their line a third time and discussed maybe running someone else – potentially former NYC Council Minority Leader Tom Ognibene, who is now Paladino’s LG running mate. (Small world).

They eventually relented, however, endorsing Bloomberg and receiving big contributions for their pains.

Stone’s comments come at the beginning of this interview. Be forewarned: There’s a lot of ant-Andrew Cuomo talk from Sliwa later on in the recording that appears below, which, if you’ll remember his “King Cuomo” act from the conventions, shouldn’t surprise anyone in the least.

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