Roger Stone, the former adviser to President Donald Trump, has now been revealed to have sought information about Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In September 2016, Stone asked Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had previously interviewed Assange for his show, to reach out to the ostensible whistleblower for information about Hillary Clinton that could damage her presidential campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal. Because Assange was known at that time to be in possession of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (and which he is believed to have acquired from Russia), Stone asked Credico by email to look into whether Assange could find anything about then-Secretary of State Clinton's involvement in allegedly ruining a supposed Libyan peace deal in 2011.
"Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30--particularly on August 20, 2011," Stone wrote to Credico. After the radio host speculated that any damning emails would already be on WikiLeaks' website, Stone asked "Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???"
Credico can be seen in the exchange asking that Stone allow him to have a "little bit of time," before adding a few hours later, "That batch probably coming out in the next drop...I can’t ask them favors every other day .I asked one of his lawyers...they have major legal headaches riggt now..relax."
Stone told the Journal by text message that Credico "provided nothing" to him and that WikiLeaks likewise never gave him anything. Credico also told the Journal that he had never relayed Stone's message to either Assange or his lawyers but lied and said that he had so that the political adviser would stop "bothering" him.
Stone also told the Journal that "I never had possession or access to any Clinton emails or records," and insisted that his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in September had been "complete and accurate" — even though Stone had told the committee members that he had contacted Assange because he "merely wanted confirmation" that they actually had information about Clinton.
"If there is such a document, then it would mean that his testimony was either deliberately incomplete or deliberately false," Adam Schiff, D - Calif., and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Journal about the possibility that Stone's emails revealed he had sought information about Clinton from Assange.
Stone has a history of interactions with WikiLeaks. Less than one month before the election, he exchanged angry direct messages with WikiLeaks over Instant Messenger on Twitter over what he seemed to perceive as their lack of appreciation for his work on their behalf, according to The Atlantic.
"Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending wikileaks and assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to reexamine the strategy of attacking me — cordially R.," Stone wrote to WikiLeaks on Oct. 13, 2016.
"We appreciate that," WikiLeaks responded. "However, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don't go there if you don't want us to correct you."
Stone clearly was not reassured.
"Ha!" he replied. "The more you 'correct' me the more people think you're lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are."
Although Assange later had his internet cut off by the Ecuadorian embassy where he lives due to his publication of the Democratic emails stolen by Russian hackers, this didn't stop WikiLeaks (whether with Assange's knowledge or not) from openly acknowledging to Stone that their relationship was going to improve after Trump was elected.
Following Trump's victory, WikiLeaks sent Stone a pair of messages:
"Happy?"
"We are now more free to communicate."
Donald Trump Jr. was also revealed to have corresponded with WikiLeaks at various points during the 2016 election, according to The Atlantic. This included WikiLeaks notifying Trump Jr. that a website linking his father to Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to launch, WikiLeaks and Trump Jr. talking about the Trump campaign sharing various news stories that served WikiLeaks' best interests and WikiLeaks asking Trump Jr. to leak part of his father's tax returns to them ("it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality").
Perhaps the most notable exchanges occurred during and after Election Day when WikiLeaks encouraged the Trump campaign to not concede if they lost to Clinton and even asked that Trump request for Australia to appoint Assange as its ambassador to the United States.
WikiLeaks didn’t write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. “Hi Don if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do,” WikiLeaks wrote at 6:35pm, when the idea that Clinton would win was still the prevailing conventional wisdom. (As late as 7:00pm that night, FiveThirtyEight, a trusted prognosticator of the election, gave Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning the presidency.) WikiLeaks insisted that contesting the election results would be good for Trump’s rumored plans to start a media network should he lose the presidency. “The discussion can be transformative as it exposes media corruption, primary corruption, PAC corruption, etc.,” WikiLeaks wrote.
Shortly after midnight that day, when it was clear that Trump had beaten all expectations and won the presidency, WikiLeaks sent him a simple message: “Wow.”
Trump Jr. did not respond to these messages either, but WikiLeaks was undeterred. “Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well!” WikiLeaks wrote on December 16 to Trump Jr., who was by then the son of the president-elect. “In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to [Washington,] DC.”
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