russia-trump
Roger Stone reportedly told allies about WikiLeaks' Clinton-targeting emails well before they were leaked
Roger Stone, who worked on President Trump's campaign in 2015 and then advised Trump afterward, told at least two associates in 2016 that he had been in contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he told one of them in spring 2016 that Assange had told him about emails WikiLeaks had obtained that would torment Democrats like John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, The Washington Post reports. "The conversation occurred before it was publicly known that hackers had obtained the emails of Podesta and of the Democratic National Committee, documents which WikiLeaks released in late July and October. The U.S. intelligence community later concluded the hackers were working for Russia."
The first Stone associate insisted on remaining anonymous, but the second one, Sam Nunberg, said Stone told him sometime in 2016 that he had met with Assange. Stone told the Post on Monday that he had been pulling Nunberg's leg. "I wish him no ill will, but Sam can manically and persistently call you," Stone said. When Nunberg called on a Friday, "I said, 'I think I will go to London for the weekend and meet with Julian Assange.' It was a joke, a throwaway line to get him off the phone. The idea that I would meet with Assange undetected is ridiculous on its face." Nunberg told the Post that Stone's statement did not seem like a joke at the time, but he was glad to hear it was. "No one connected to the president should be connected with Julian Assange," he said.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators are interested in Stone's contacts with WikiLeaks and Assange, given that Stone appeared to have advance notice of WikiLeaks' Podesta email dump, which began hours after the Post published the Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault. Earlier this year, The Atlantic also published private messages Stone traded with WikiLeaks. You can read more about Stone's WikiLeaks trail at The Washington Post.