text:
rigorousintuition.ca
What you don't know can't hurt them.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=40914
Re: Roger Stone
by seemslikeadream
Roger Stone Is Running Out of Options
Stone, who is under investigation by Robert Mueller, says he'll never "roll" on Trump. Is he betting on a presidential pardon, or simply taking a cue from Paul Manafort?
Abigail TracyOctober 22, 2018 1:08 pm
By Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images.
For months, Roger Stone has been predicting his indictment by Robert Mueller. "It is not inconceivable now that Mr. Mueller and his team may seek to conjure up some extraneous crime pertaining to my business, or maybe not even pertaining to the 2016 election," he told Meet the Press in May. At least eight of his current or former associates had been "terrorized" by the special counsel's office, he claimed. In an August e-mail to supporters, urging them to help fund his legal defense, he sounded resigned to his fate. "Robert Mueller is coming for me," he wrote.
Stone, a longtime Republican operative who has worked with Paul Manafort and advised Donald Trump, remains a free man. But as the midterms approach and Mueller prepares to re-enter the spotlight, a flurry of activity inside the special counsel's office suggests that Stone's "time in the barrel," as he memorably said of John Podesta, may finally be at hand. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have interviewed nearly a dozen Stone associates, a number of whom have testified before a grand jury. They have also interviewed Manafort, who recently cut a plea deal with the special counsel, about his former colleague. According to multiple reports, investigators are interested in whether Stone's communications with WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker known as "Guccifer 2.0," who allegedly hacked the Clinton campaign, constitute a criminal conspiracy.
At issue is whether Stone or other Trump associates had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks's plans to release the thousands of e-mails obtained by the Russians, or whether they coordinated their efforts in any way. Stone, for his part, has long maintained that he knew nothing of the e-mail dumps himself, despite his August 2016 boast about communicating with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his subsequent prediction that Podesta—Hillary Clinton's campaign manager—would be their next target. When Podesta's hacked e-mails were indeed leaked, some six weeks later, Stone immediately came under suspicion. Throughout October, the self-described "dirty trickster" continued to make predictions about future WikiLeaks e-mail dumps, hinting often at an "October surprise."
Stone has since downplayed his ties to WikiLeaks, insisting that he never actually spoke with Assange, and that his real source was radio personality Randy Credico. The supposed prophecy regarding Podesta, Stone later claimed, was also a reference to his brother, Tony Podesta, a well-known Democratic lobbyist.
Stone's account puts him at odds with Credico, who has denied that he acted as the intermediary between WikiLeaks and Stone. Credico allies told The Washington Post that he believes Stone has set him up as a "decoy." Of course, both men have an incentive to blame the other. According to a person familiar with the matter, Credico has testified before a grand jury that Stone told him about his back channel to WikiLeaks. But two Stone associates, filmmaker David Lugo and attorney Tyler Nixon, said Credico has acknowledged that he was Stone's source. In text messages Lugo provided to the Post, Credico wrote, "I knew Rodger [sic] was going to name me sooner or later and so I told you that I'm the so-called back Channel."
The stakes are high for Stone as Mueller seeks to disentangle the conflicting claims. During his September 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Stone claimed he had "never said or written" that he had any direct communications with Assange, and that any of his communications with WikiLeaks were through Credico. Stone's phrasing may have been deliberately unclear. But if Credico's account is truthful, then Stone may have perjured himself.
It is a federal crime to "knowingly and willfully" provide "materially" false statements to Congress—even if one is not under oath. If Stone is determined to have misled lawmakers about his contacts with WikiLeaks and Assange, he could face up to five years in prison. And notably, Stone wouldn't be the first individual to get saddled with this charge as part of a special-counsel investigation. John M. Poindexter, who served as the national-security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, was sentenced to prison for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, though the conviction was later overturned. More recently, Mueller has leveraged false statements by Mike Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos to gain their cooperation. If the special counsel is still working his way up the food chain, as the White House fears, then he may be seeking to flip Stone next.
Stone, for his part, has said he will never turn on Trump. "The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business, and political life, seeking something—anything—he can use to pressure me, to silence me, and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump," he told the Post. "This I will not do. When I say I won't roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down." The strength of that assertion may suggest Stone is holding open the door for a presidential pardon if things go south. Or perhaps Stone is simply taking his cue from Manafort when it comes to dealing with the special counsel, and waiting until the last moment to cave.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10 ... estigation
Mueller drills down on Roger Stone's WikiLeaks contacts
Mueller investigating Stone's WikiLeaks contacts
Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's scrutiny of Roger Stone includes investigating whether Stone had backchannels to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election beyond the New York radio host and political activist whom Stone claims was his primary go-between, according to people familiar with the matter.
Investigators' queries to people connected to Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, suggest Mueller's team is skeptical of Stone's explanation that Randy Credico was his main intermediary, according to people familiar with interviews conducted by investigators. The scrutiny also includes probing Stone's relationship with right-wing journalist and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi about whether he also acted as a go-between with Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a source said.
The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal previously reported about Mueller's interest in Corsi's possible interactions with WikiLeaks.
Washington Post: Special counsel examining Roger Stone's conflicting accounts of WikiLeaks ties
Additionally, investigators are looking into whether Stone shared information that he believed was from WikiLeaks with members of Trump's presidential campaign, according to a source familiar with the probe. Investigators have been provided recordings of Stone claiming he talked to Trump regularly early in the 2016 presidential campaign, CNN has learned. Later, after various document dumps from WikiLeaks, Stone claimed in separate communications he should receive credit for coordinating with the group, the source said.
The queries about whether Stone may have shared information with the Trump campaign are a strong indication that Mueller's team is still actively investigating the possibility that someone close to Trump engaged in collusion with the Russians.
"We have said over and over again that he shared nothing with the campaign because he had nothing to share," said Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone. "He received nothing from anybody. At what point does this old record get worn out from being played over and over again?"
"I never discussed WikiLeaks stuff with Trump and would never have said I should get credit for coordinating with WikiLeaks since I did no such thing," Stone said.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. A lawyer for the President declined to comment.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Trump denied that he knew about WikiLeaks before the shadowy website started releasing hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The President said, "When WikiLeaks came out ... never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it. When WikiLeaks came out, all I was just saying is, 'Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff.'"
Stone's associates questioned on contacts
While Stone said he has not been contacted by Mueller's team, many of his associates have been called in for interviews or testimony before the grand jury. Witnesses said the main focus of their interviews has been Stone's contact with WikiLeaks and Assange. Some of them are still actively cooperating with Mueller's team and have handed over troves of communications involving Stone, according to sources familiar with the matter.
A key area of inquiry is whether Stone actually received information from WikiLeaks and who helped facilitate that information-sharing. Investigators' questions to Corsi about his communications with WikiLeaks and Stone indicate they are trying to determine whether Stone had other go-betweens with WikiLeaks.
Corsi has participated in hours of interviews with Mueller's team and testified before the grand jury, according to sources familiar with the situation. Corsi's lawyer declined to comment.
2016 Presidential Campaign Hacking Fast Facts
At one point, Corsi appeared to provide cover for one of Stone's most inflammatory tweets: His summer 2016 claim that "it will soon (be) the Podesta's time in the barrel." It was later seen as an indication Stone may have had advance warning that then-Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's hacked emails would soon be public.
In March 2017, Corsi -- who was then the Washington bureau chief for InfoWars -- wrote, "Having reviewed my records, I am now confident that I am the source behind Stone's tweet." In his article, Corsi claimed his own research inspired Stone's Twitter missive. Stone has since said he was referring to the business dealings of both John Podesta and his brother, DC lobbyist Tony Podesta.
Mueller's quiet period has not been very quiet
Stone has suggested that the special counsel may be interested in Corsi's own relationship with Trump rather than Corsi's interactions with Stone. But a person familiar with the situation said investigators were mainly interested in Corsi's interactions with Stone and whether he acted as Stone's backchannel.
Stone told CNN, "Corsi told me he was never in communication with WikiLeaks or Assange, I believe him and know of no evidence to the contrary."
Corsi's own attorney denied to CNN back in September that his client was in touch with Assange, WikiLeaks or Guciffer 2.0, US intelligence has determined that the online persona Guccifer 2.0 was a front for Russian intelligence and Russian officers who hacked Democrats and passed the stolen material on to WikiLeaks during the campaign.
Stone's own words fuel questions
Stone has been under scrutiny for his contact with Guccifer 2.0 and comments he made in 2016 that appeared to suggest he had advance knowledge of material from WikiLeaks before it was released.
"I actually have communicated with Assange," Stone said in a speech in Florida on August 8, 2016. "I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there's no telling what the October surprise may be."
The Atlantic reported Stone and WikiLeaks exchanged direct messages on Twitter, but both have denied that they were in direct contact about the release of Clinton emails.
Stone told CNN that "although my claims were dramatized for effect before a partisan audience, they were not fabricated and I clarified in a dozen interviews that my 'communication' with Assange had been through a third party." He added, "I had no advance knowledge of the source or content of the material WikiLeaks would ultimately release."
Roger Stone aide hopes Kavanaugh will support his case against Mueller
Meanwhile, Stone's claim that he used Credico as that third party has been met with inconsistencies as well as denials from Credico. The radio host, who is open about his friendship with Assange, has denied funneling information back-and-forth to Assange on Stone's behalf.
"I am a decoy, the patsy to divert attention," Credico told CNN. "Or he just didn't have one (an intermediary) and his ego was too big to admit that."
Stone also suggested to reporters and associates that he had other links to WikiLeaks. A source familiar with the matter said Credico told the grand jury that Stone mentioned having another link to WikiLeaks.
"I did tell Credico I had an additional source who also told me the material was coming and that the revelations would address the Clinton Foundation," Stone told CNN.
When he appeared before the House Intelligence Committee last year, Stone testified that he had no direct contact with Assange during the election and instead relied on a go-between.
In a letter following his committee appearance, Stone's lawyer identified his intermediary as Credico.
Special counsel's office has radio interviews between Roger Stone and alleged WikiLeaks 'back channel'
"Mr. Stone noticed Credico had traveled to London on at least two occasions and conducted two landmark interviews with Julian Assange on WBAI," Stone's lawyer wrote, referring to the New York progressive radio station where Credico worked.
But Stone's timeline doesn't align with public events.
Stone claims that Credico's interviews with Assange inspired Stone to use Credico as a backchannel, according to the letter from Stone's attorney. But Credico didn't interview Assange until August 25, 2016, weeks after Stone started touting an intermediary. Stone now says that he knew Credico had ties to WikiLeaks even before the Assange interview.
As first reported by CNN, in multiple radio interviews between Credico and Stone -- now in the special counsel's possession -- Credico also asked Stone about the backchannel and expressed doubt that any such backchannel exists.
In yet another discrepancy, the letter from Stone's lawyer to the House committee also insists that Stone had only ever asked Credico to confirm information that Assange had shared publicly in media interviews or via social media.
Roger Stone built a 'dirty trickster' image. Now Robert Mueller might build a case on it.
But on September 18, 2016, Stone asked Credico to ferret out other information from Assange that Stone believed would be damaging to Hillary Clinton. "Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30...," a portion of the email from Stone to Credico says about Clinton emails from 2011.
"My testimony before the House Intelligence Committee was entirely truthful and there is no credible evidence to the contrary," Stone told CNN, maintaining that Credico was his primary backchannel and that he has associates who will corroborate his account.
"From the beginning, I wanted to protect the identity of Credico, because I knew that his support for Julian Assange and the journalistic independence of WikiLeaks would not be popular in the progressive left circles where he made a living," Stone said. "I turned over Randy Credico's name to the House Intelligence Committee only reluctantly."
Stone's lawyer said there were "no inconsistencies in what we sent to the House."
While Stone has proclaimed his innocence, he has said he believes Mueller's team could bring charges against him to try to force him to cooperate against Trump.
Prosecutors may also be confronted with the possibility that Stone, a braggadocios self-proclaimed "dirty trickster," did not actually have access to a legitimate backchannel providing him information from WikiLeaks.
"He may have had somebody, I don't know," said Credico. "Who can tell with this guy?"
UPDATE: This story has been updated to add more detail about previous reporting from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/22/politics ... index.html
DETOUR: ROGER STONE'S EPICALLY SHITTY EXPLANATION FOR HIS PODESTA TWEET
October 22, 2018/1 Comment/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
I need to take another detour from my series on the universe of the known hacked and leaked emails from 2016.
While working on the Podesta email post, my treatment of how epically shitty Stone's explanation for his August 21, 2016 tweet boasting that "it would soon the Podesta's time in the barrel" grew so big it has become its own post.
For reasons I laid out in this post, the public record is not all that convincing that Stone did have foreknowledge of the Podesta dump. Both in August, when he started talking about foreknowledge of a Hillary release, and in October, when he promised it on a specific day (that turned out to be wrong), he predicted WikiLeaks would dump Hillary's deleted emails, not Podesta's emails.
But Stone's explanation for the tweet is epically shitty and increasingly makes me think he not only knew that Podesta's emails would be released, but may have seen some of them in advance.
Effectively, Stone claimed to the House Intelligence Committee that his Podesta comment referred to a report Jerome Corsi did for him between August 14 and 31 2016 (which doesn't identifiably show up in Stone's political expenditures in this period).
My Tweet of August 21, 2016, in which I said, "Trust me, it will soon be the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary" Must be examined in context. I posted this at a time that my boyhood friend and colleague, Paul Manafort, had just resigned from the Trump campaign over allegations regarding his business activities in Ukraine. I thought it manifestly unfair that John Podesta not be held to the same standard. Note, that my Tweet of August 21, 2016, makes no mention, whatsoever, of Mr. Podesta's email, but does accurately predict that the Podesta brothers' business activities in Russia with the oligarchs around Putin, their uranium deal, their bank deal, and their Gazprom deal, would come under public scrutiny. Podesta's activities were later reported by media outlets as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. My extensive knowledge of the Podesta brothers' business dealings in Russia was based on The Panama Papers, which were released in early 2016, which revealed that the Podesta brothers had extensive business dealings in Russia. The Tweet is also based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st , all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podesta's email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin.
The claim is, particularly knowing what we know about efforts Paul Manafort was making to hide his own corruption by asking Tony Podesta to avoid legally mandated reporting, … interesting. Particularly given the way this timeline overlaps with some other events, notably Manafort's increasingly desperate efforts to stave off bankruptcy even while working for Trump for "free." There are also some oddities about how the timing evolved from those August "research" documents and later October publications. I'll hit both those timing issues in my Podesta email post.
For now, consider what Corsi claimed back in March 2017, the first attempt to explain Stone's tweet. In his version, Stone's tweet was about four different reports.
Corsi first said that he started researching the Podestas and Russia in response to reading a July 31, 2016 Government Accountability Institute report, one not mentioned in Stone's explanation.
On July 31, 2016, the New York Post reported that Peter Schweizer's Washington-based Government Accountability Institute had published a report entitled, "From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism."
That report detailed cash payments from Russia to the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation which included a Putin-connected Russian government fund that transferred $35 million to a small company that included Podesta and several senior Russian officials on its executive board.
"Russian government officials and American corporations participated in the technology transfer project overseen by Hillary Clinton's State Department that funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation," the report noted in the executive summary.
"John Podesta failed to reveal, as required by law on his federal financial disclosures, his membership on the board of this offshore company," the executive summary continued. "Podesta also headed up a think tank which wrote favorably about the Russian reset while apparently receiving millions from Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs via an offshore LLC."
Reading Schweizer's report, I began conducting extensive research into Secretary Clinton's "reset" policy with Russia, Podesta's membership on the board of Joule Global Holdings, N.V. – a shell company in the Netherlands that Russians close to Putin used to launder money – as well as Podesta's ties to a foundation run by one of the investors in Joule Energy, Hans-Jorg Wyss, a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation.
Corsi appears to be playing some temporal games here. While he points to the NY Post's August 1 report on the report, by URL, the public version of it appears to have been released on August 12. That's not a huge deal (it's not like Corsi couldn't get Schweizer's rat-fuckery directly, though he pointedly doesn't cite it), but it does suggest he's making efforts to play with the August timeline to date it to the first days of August, which is particularly interesting given that Stone claimed Corsi's research took place in "early" August.
Having claimed this report got him interested in substantiating a tie between Hillary and Russia, Corsi then shifts, saying that the August 14 NYT story on Manafort's secret ledgers did (which I would call "mid-August," not early August). He claimed his goal in response to the NYT reporting — it's not clear whether this started on August 1 or August 14 — was just to publicize the already-written GAI report.
On Aug. 14, 2016, the New York Times reported that a secret ledger in Ukraine listed cash payments for Paul Manafort, a consultant to the Ukraine's former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
When this article was published, I suggested to Roger Stone that the attack over Manafort's ties to Russia needed to be countered.
My plan was to publicize the Government Accountability Institute's report, "From Russia With Money," that documented how Putin paid substantial sums of money to both Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.
Putin must have wanted Hillary to win in 2016, if only because Russian under-the-table cash payments to the Clintons and to Podesta would have made blackmailing her as president easy.
On Aug. 14, 2016, I began researching for Roger Stone a memo that I entitled "Podesta."
So Corsi suggests the report he did for Stone was based on the GAI one.
Except Corsi's report (starting at PDF 39, copies of the report are at this point just reproductions without metadata to track when they were written, but Corsi claims to have handed over ways for Mueller to track such things when he interviewed with Mueller's team and then appeared before the grand jury in September) doesn't deal with the GAI report at all. Instead, it is a direct response to the NYT Manafort report, claiming that the NYT reporting (the stuff that has since been confirmed by all of Manafort's guilty pleas) was not substantiated. It then makes a key logical move, admitting that his report is an attempt to undermine the claim that Russia's close ties to Manafort had some relation to the hack-and-leak.
From there, the Democratic Party narrative continues to suggest Manafort's close relationship to the Kremlin allowed him to position the Trump campaign to receive a dump of hacked emails that embarrassed the Clinton campaign by exposing the efforts Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as chairman of the DNC, took to rig the primaries for Hillary, to the distinct disadvantage of challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The entire Democratic Party narrative is thrown into disarray if it turns out the Podesta brothers, via the Podesta Group, have tighter and more easily documentable financial ties to Russia, involving far greater numbers than have ever been suggested to tie Manafort to Russia via Ukraine.
This is a key distinction. While the report definitely responds to the burgeoning scandal about Manafort's ties to Russian oligarchs, Corsi admits that this report is about undercutting the claim that Russia would have reason to target Hillary in a hack-and-leak effort. So yeah, it's about Stone's "boyhood friend and colleague" (who at the time was setting off on a crime spree to hide his Russian ties), but it's also about his longtime buddy Donald Trump, too.
From there the Corsi report focuses on the Podesta Group, on Uranium One, on Clinton's ties to Fethulla Gulen (whom Mike Flynn was moving towards on kidnapping at the time), as if any of that suggests closer ties to Russia than Manafort has. Virtually the only claim about John Podesta (as opposed to Tony) is that he had ties to Hillary's Foundation.
The idea behind Corsi's story, I suppose, is that if Corsi started writing this report on August 14, then when Podesta tweeted on August 21, it would reflect a draft of the report that bears the final date of August 31. There's no public record to support that chronology, though.
From there, Corsi notes that he and Podesta returned to the subject of the GAI report — Podesta's ties with Joule — in October.
On October 6, 2016, I published in WND.com the first of a series of articles detailing Putin's financial ties to Clinton and Podesta, based largely on the research contained in the Government Accountability Institute's report, "From Russia With Money."
On Oct. 13, 2016, Stone published on his website an article entitled, "Russian Mafia money laundering, the Clinton Foundation and John Podesta."
So thus far, Corsi argues that the progression goes from an August 1 GAI Report, to … something … to his research starting on August 14 about entirely unrelated allegations about the Podestas, back to both he and Stone writing on Joule in October.
In his description of the October pieces, Corsi claims — citing selectively — that Stone's Joule piece relied on his and (he seems to claim, but this is nonsense) his private research report.
A comparison of the two articles will show the extent to which Stone incorporated my research into his analysis.
Though he cites Stone's denials of advance knowledge that WikiLeaks would dump the Podesta emails, Corsi doesn't cite this passage in Stone's October 13 piece.
Wikileaks emails tie John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, into the money-laundering network with the confirmation Podesta had exercised 75,000 shares out of 100,000 previously undisclosed stock options he was secretly issued by Joule Unlimited, a U.S. corporation that ties back to Vekselberg connected Joule Global Stichting in the Netherlands – a shady entity identified in the Panama Papers as an offshore money-laundering client of the notorious Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
As a clear indication of guilty conscience, the Wikileaks Podesta file further documents that Podesta made a serious effort to keep the transaction from coming to light as evidenced by his decision to transfer 75,000 common shares of Joule Unlimited to Leonidio LLC, another shady shell corporation – this one listed in Salt Lake City at the home apartment of the gentlemen who registered the company.
Stone mentions — but does not link to — some of the WikiLeaks files he's discussing. It is true that two Podesta emails released two days earlier on October 11 (December 31, 2013 resignation letter, January 7, 2014 severance letters) relate to the stuff Stone mentions and have some of the same numbers. They certainly don't substantiate Stone's claim about mob ties and shell corporations. Plus, two of the Joule documents that might actually pertain to Stone's claims weren't released until October 31 and November 1.
That at least suggests that Stone may have had those WikiLeaks emails earlier — and it may suggest he had "WikiLeaks documents" that never got published, which he ironically would have referenced in a piece purporting to prove he didn't have advance knowledge of the release.
Stone also claims further research reflects an unsubstantiated further tie with (Trump inauguration donor) Viktor Vekselberg, one he didn't repeat when he revived the post to implicate Michael Cohen last May.
Further research has documented that Viktor Vekselberg arranged for two transfers of unknown amounts to a private Clinton Foundation account in the Bank of America, with the funds passing though a pass-through account at Deutsche Bank and Trust Company Americas in New York City – with the first transfer made on Feb. 10, 2015, and the second on March 15, 2016.
I'm not actually sure what to make of Stone's post. I have yet to chase down where all these claims come from (if not from Stone's ripe imagination).
But even aside from these three unsubstantiated claims, I know this.
Corsi originally claimed that all four reports — the August 1 GAI report, his own August 14-31 private report to Stone, his own revival of the GAI report the day before the Podesta emails started coming out on October 7, and then Stone's own piece after some WikiLeaks documents came out that sort of related to his arguments but not entirely — were part of the same effort.
That's not right. His own report for Stone is the outlier.
While it's unsurprising that Manafort's "boyhood friend" might solicit a report both to protect that boyhood friend and his longtime political mentee, Donald Trump, that report was part of a separate effort than the GAI research — which Stone would ultimately claim without proof WikiLeaks releases supported. It's unclear which of the three things is most damning: the Stone report which claimed to use WikiLeaks research to elaborate on the GAI research, the report attempting to disprove true facts about Manafort's ties to Russia, or the tweet.
But they don't explain each other. And inserted into the timeline — as I'll do — they become even more problematic.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/10/22/d ... sta-tweet/
Mueller probes Roger Stone's interactions with Trump campaign and timing of WikiLeaks release of Podesta emails
Manuel Roig-Franzia
The special counsel investigation into President Trump's longtime ally Roger Stone is pressing witnesses about Stone's private interactions with senior campaign officials and whether he had knowledge of politically explosive Democratic emails that were released in October 2016, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.
As part of his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III appears to be intently focused on the question of whether WikiLeaks coordinated its activities with Stone and the campaign, including the group's timing, the people said. Stone and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.
On Friday, Mueller's team questioned Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former chief campaign strategist, about alleged claims Stone made privately about WikiLeaks before the group released emails allegedly hacked by Russian operatives, according to people familiar with the session.
In recent weeks, Mueller's team has also interviewed several Stone associates, including New York comedian Randy Credico and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. Both testified before the grand jury.
Investigators have questioned witnesses about events surrounding Oct. 7, 2016, the day The Washington Post published a recording of Trump bragging about his ability to grab women by their genitals, the people said.
Less than an hour after The Post published its story about Trump's crude comments during a taping of "Access Hollywood," WikiLeaks delivered a competing blow to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by releasing a trove of emails hacked from the account of her campaign chairman John Podesta.
The group trickled out new batches of Podesta's private messages nearly daily through the campaign's final weeks, ensuring the stolen documents would vex Clinton's campaign until Election Day.
Investigators have been scrutinizing phone and email records from the fall of 2016, looking for evidence of what triggered WikiLeaks to drop the Podesta emails right after the "Access Hollywood" tape story broke, according to people with knowledge of the probe.
In an interview this week, Stone vehemently denied any prior knowledge of the Podesta emails. He said he did not play any role in determining the timing of their release by WikiLeaks or suggest they be used to blunt the impact of the "Access Hollywood" tape.
It is unclear whether the special prosecutor has evidence connecting Stone to WikiLeaks's activities. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, could have concluded on his own that releasing the emails on that day would benefit Trump.
The results of Mueller's inquiry could answer the central question of his probe: whether there was coordination between Trump's campaign and Russian activities. Trump has repeatedly declared there was "no collusion."
[Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens]
In his interview Friday with the special counsel team, Bannon was asked about Stone's interactions with the campaign and instances in which Stone allegedly made private comments that matched his public declarations of having knowledge of WikiLeaks's plans, according to people with knowledge of the interview.
In a statement to The Post today, Bannon said: "Mueller's team has been very professional and courteous. Out of respect for the process, I will not discuss my interviews with them, but people shouldn't believe everything they read." William Burck, an attorney for Bannon, declined to comment.
Stone denied he had discussed WikiLeaks with Trump campaign officials.
"There are no such communications and if Bannon says there are he would be dissembling," he said.
Stone said he may have briefly discussed WikiLeaks's email releases with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime business partner, but only after Manafort stepped down from his post in August.
Last month, Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel as part of a plea deal in which he admitted to two counts of conspiracy and obstruction.
Bannon — who was previously interviewed by Mueller's investigators for more than 20 hours in February — was also briefly asked Friday about potential obstruction of the Russia investigation by Trump, including the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, according to people briefed on the discussions.
The special counsel and Trump's legal team are currently in a standoff over Mueller's request to question the president, a step Mueller has sought before completing a report that will be issued to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Stone said he never coordinated with WikiLeaks, and that his tweets and public comments predicting a coming WikiLeaks release were intended solely to generate publicity that might help Trump.
"I deserve credit for hyping public attention, but not coordinating," Stone said this week.
The special counsel's focus on Stone appears to have intensified in recent weeks.
Among those who have been interviewed recently was Corsi, who has written about providing Stone with opposition research about the Clintons. He appeared last month before the grand jury investigating evidence in Mueller's probe, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Corsi's attorney, David Gray, confirmed last month that Mueller's team served Corsi with a subpoena that sought information about Corsi's communications with Stone in 2016 and 2017, and that Corsi planned to cooperate with the investigation.
Stone said in a text message Tuesday he had added prominent defense attorney Bruce Rogow to his legal team and had "passed" two polygraphs related to matters being investigated by the special counsel. The results of such tests are often declared inadmissible in court. ABC News first reported about the tests and Stone's new attorney.
For months, Mueller's team has been investigating public comments — and alleged private claims — Stone made in 2016 suggesting he had access to WikiLeaks.
Stone has said he was merely referring to public reports about Assange's plans and information he got from Credico, a liberal New York radio host who interviewed Assange on his show. Credico has repeatedly denied passing any information from WikiLeaks to Stone.
Stone recently added to his account, saying he had also been tipped about a possible coming WikiLeaks disclosure by viewing an email from James Rosen, then a Fox News reporter, that was sent to blogger Charles Ortel. Ortel confirmed to The Post that he'd forwarded Stone the email, in which Rosen said he was hearing a major disclosure related to Clinton was in the offing. Rosen declined to comment.
During the presidential campaign, Stone at times appeared prescient about WikiLeaks's strategy.
In spring 2016, before it was public WikiLeaks had received any hacked Democratic emails, Stone privately told an associate he knew the group had a treasure trove of emails that would embarrass Clinton and torment senior Democrats such as Podesta, The Post reported in March.
WikiLeaks first released a series of Democratic Party emails on July 22, 2016.
Later, in a widely reported speech to a Republican group in South Florida in early August 2016, Stone boasted: "I actually have communicated with Assange." Then, on Aug. 21, he tweeted, "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel."
Stone has said his tweet was a reference to opposition research he got from Corsi about the business dealings of Podesta and his brother, Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta.
Six weeks later, WikiLeaks began posting online emails stolen from Podesta's account.
A little before 4 p.m. that day, The Post had published its story about a 2005 recording of Trump talking in vulgar terms about women with Billy Bush, a host of NBC's "Access Hollywood" show.
"And when you're a star, they let you do it," he said. "Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything."
The revelation set off a panic inside the campaign and some advisers feared it would end Trump's White House bid.
But at 4:32 p.m., WikiLeaks announced its own news: The group had 50,000 of Podesta's emails and was releasing a first tranche of 2,500.
The first documents posted did not appear to be selected at random. They included an internal campaign document with quotes from Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and major corporations the Democratic candidate had resisted releasing.
"On Oct. 7, the Access Hollywood tape comes out. One hour later, WikiLeaks starts dropping my emails," Podesta later said in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd. "One could say that those things might not have been a coincidence."
This July, Mueller indicted a dozen Russian military intelligence officers of conspiring to hack Democrats, including Podesta, and leaking their stolen emails to WikiLeaks.
[How the Russians hacked the DNC and passed its emails to WikiLeaks]
Stone told The Post he had no idea the "Access Hollywood" tape existed until The Post published its story.
"I was on the street in New York," Stone said. "I was shocked when I heard this."
Stone was a prolific memo writer during the campaign, sending 1- or 1 1/2-page strategy missives to Trump via the New York developer's longtime assistant, Rhona Graff.
"She would print them out and put them on the pile," Stone said.
But by the time the "Access Hollywood" tape became public, Stone said, he was sending fewer memos than earlier in the campaign because he felt Trump's approach to the campaign had been firmly established and there was less need to offer guidance.
In fact, Stone said, he never discussed the "Access Hollywood" tape with Trump or the release of Podesta's emails.
"I never discussed WikiLeaks with him," Stone said. "I never discussed Assange with him. I never discussed Billy Bush."
However, Stone said in the wake of the "Access Hollywood" story, he aggressively pushed Bannon to mount a counteroffensive. He said he urged the strategist to have the campaign make a central issue of Clinton's efforts to protect her husband, former president Bill Clinton, from allegations of extramarital affairs and sexual assault.
A person close to Bannon said he does not recall any such discussion with Stone and denies Stone had anything to do with the campaign's decision to go after Clinton on her husband's treatment of women as a response to the explosive tape.
Stone said he had been pressing Trump and campaign officials to use that strategy for months, dating back to the period when Manafort was campaign chairman. But, he said, the candidate and key advisers had resisted.
Trump "knew my position," Stone said. "But I had stopped arguing with him."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ab2b255db2
As special counsel closes in, Roger Stone suits up for legal battle
PHOTO: Roger Stone, former adviser to Donald Trumps presidential campaign, listens during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, May 12, 2017.Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Longtime Republican political operative Roger Stone is gearing up for battle with special counsel Robert Mueller after a parade of witnesses has appeared before a grand jury to be grilled about their relationship with Stone during critical moments of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Sources tell ABC News that Stone, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump, quietly expanded his legal team in recent months, hiring prestigious Florida attorney Bruce Rogow, who will be Stone's lead attorney on all matters related to the office of the special counsel and all constitutional matters, such as first amendment issues that may arise.
In the past, Rogow has represented President Donald Trump's golf club interests in a handful of civil matters out of Florida over the past 20 years. His over 50-year career in litigation includes eleven cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.
PHOTO: Roger Stone speaks at the Pasadena Convention Center on July 30, 2017 in Pasadena, Calif.Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images, FILE
Roger Stone speaks at the Pasadena Convention Center on July 30, 2017 in Pasadena, Calif.
"Mr. Robert Buschel and I welcome the presence of someone with Mr. Rogow's stature and gravitas," another Stone lawyer, Grant Smith, told ABC News of Rogow joining he and Buschel on the Stone legal team.
MORE: Special counsel pushing Paul Manafort for information on Roger Stone: Sources
Rogow told ABC News on Tuesday that the veteran GOP political operative has still not been contacted by the Office of Special Counsel.
Stone's legal team tells ABC News that last month their client voluntarily took two polygraph tests, which they claim will show Stone passing with flying colors on a spectrum of key issues covering areas of interest in the Mueller probe related o Stone.
The two polygraph tests, paid for by Stone's legal team, were administered by Slattery Associates Inc. in Florida. Stone's legal team shared the results from the tests exclusively with ABC News for review. However, ABC News cannot independently verify the results of the tests.
According to the Department of Justice, both the Federal Rules of Evidence and U.S. Code do not have a specific provision about the admissibility of polygraph test results in a trial, but the department cites many examples in which polygraphs are found inadmissible.
The questions included whether Stone communicated with Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential election and whether he ever discussed at any time the stolen information from Wikileaks and with Donald Trump during that time, all to which Stone replied, "no."
PHOTO: Roger Stone speaks during a visit to the Womens Republican Club of Miami, May 22, 2017, in Coral Gables, Fla. Robert Mueller departs after a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Capitol, June 21, 2017.Getty Images/AP
Roger Stone speaks during a visit to the Women's Republican Club of Miami, May 22, 2017, in Coral Gables, Fla. Robert Mueller departs after a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Capitol, June 21, 2017.more +
"I suggested a polygraph in order to pin down the veracity of Roger's positions on the investigation by the special counsel with regard to Julian Assange and Wikileaks," Rogow told ABC News on Tuesday. "I have great confidence in the polygraph examiner, to whom I sent Mr. Stone."
Nearly a dozen individuals associated with Stone have met with the special counsel since last summer and many of those have appeared before a grand jury impaneled by Mueller's team. The witnesses have told ABC News they were asked about Stone's dealings during the 2016 election and what if any contact he may have had with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange through an intermediary, which Stone denies.
MORE: Roger Stone sought contact with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, email suggests
"In general they're talking about you know Guccifer and D.C. Leaks and WikiLeaks they're talking about the timing of some things that happened at the campaign and at the convention," Michael Caputo, a former campaign aide to then-candidate Trump and one of Stone's closest friends, told ABC News after an interview with Mueller's team in May.
The special counsel's newest cooperating witnesses, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, has been asked about his friend and former business associate, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
MORE: Another Roger Stone associate meets with Mueller grand jury
The development comes as ABC News learns Mueller's team is interested in examining tapes of a series of conference calls hosted by Roger Stone in 2016 during which he allegedly made comments about Wikileaks, a source with direct knowledge tells ABC News.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In an invitation from August 4, 2016, Stone, marketing himself as "the ultimate political insider," invited participants to take part in a bi-weekly open conference call advertised on Stone's various social media accounts. Jason Sullivan, Stone's former social media adviser who testified before Mueller's grand jury over the summer, helped coordinate and emcee, according to a source.
A lawyer for Sullivan, Knut Johnson, declined to comment on the matter.
Sources have told ABC News that, as of yet, Mueller's team has been unable to acquire the complete recordings of those tapes.
"Mr. Stone is confident that the transcripts of whatever recordings may be out there are 100% consistent with his sworn testimony and both his public statements at the time, and subsequent clarifications of the same," Grant Smith, Stone's attorney told ABC News.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/special ... d=58849731
STONE V NYT: THE TREACHERY OF DUELING INCOMPLETE STORIES
November 1, 2018/8 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
Both Roger Stone and the NYT have dueling stories out, both falling far short of what they need to tell us about a set of emails sent the first week of October 2016 between Breitbart editor Matthew Boyle, his former boss turned Trump campaign chair Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone.
Neither outlet shows the email addresses or tells us what domains Bannon and Stone were using (Boyle seems to have sent at least one of these emails from his Breitbart account). That's a huge part of the story given that, earlier this week, Stone denied to the WaPo discussing WikiLeaks with Trump campaign officials.
Stone denied discussing WikiLeaks with Trump campaign officials.
"There are no such communications, and if Bannon says there are he would be dissembling," he said.
Plus, if Bannon used a non-campaign address to communicate with Boyle and/or Stone, it would suggest an effort to distance his ties to the two from the official campaign business (and might suggest Mueller had to have gone through extra effort to obtain these emails).
The NYT doesn't provide times for the emails it presents (which is especially problematic because it bolloxes the timing of Stone's tweets, most notably by using the UTC time for them and therefore showing a tweet he sent late the night of October 1 as being sent on October 2).
And while Stone at least provided the times of the emails he published, he somehow put London's time zone behind the US (which I'll treat as an editing error and note he was surely rushing to beat the NYT to press, which he did).
Assange held a press event Oct. 2 (Oct. 3 U.S. time) and did not release any documents that day as had been widely expected, Bannon e-mailed me asking why.
Plus, both ignore a key part of events of early October, the first reports that Mueller witness Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone wrote up from the Podesta emails leaked that week, which was based off a story that Bannon himself had originated. NYT's accompanying story which details that Mueller has raised questions about Stone's dark money funds, doesn't address Stone's Stop the Steal fund, which engaged in voter suppression, meaning Stone may be deliberately misdirecting again.
Mueller's investigators have also delved into the operations of Mr. Stone's political organizations. Mr. Stone has said investigators are examining a nonprofit educational fund called the Committee for American Sovereignty Education Fund, which he said produced a film alleging that former President Bill Clinton fathered an illegitimate child, a favorite theme of Mr. Stone's.
The organization bills itself as a nonprofit social welfare organization that has been designated by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4) group. But there is no indication in I.R.S. records that it has that status.
Mr. Stone's Oct. 4, 2016, email to Mr. Bannon suggested another reason prosecutors might be interested in the fund. Asking the campaign to promote his theory of an illegitimate son of Mr. Clinton, he wrote: "I've raised $150K for the targeted black digital campaign through a C-4," he wrote.
"Tell Rebecca to send us some $$$," Mr. Stone added, apparently referring to Rebekah Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor close to Mr. Bannon. There is no indication that Mr. Bannon replied to him or sought out Ms. Mercer, and it is unclear whether Mr. Stone's solicitation, alone, violated federal election laws. Mr. Stone said he was referring to a campaign targeting African-American voters.
In short, the stories, sourced to Bannon and maybe Sam Nunberg on one side and Stone on the other, really don't tell us what Mueller's after here. But they do provide a bunch of shitholes an opportunity to explain away a suspicious exchange without addressing known issues with them.
What these stories do show is that on October 3 (it appears to be after Stone's tweet claiming "total confidence" that Julian Assange would educate the American people soon) Boyle asked Stone what Assange had coming. "Hope it's good."
Stone used that opportunity to try to get to Bannon, by promising that Assange had something good while noting that Bannon "doesn't call me back" (it's unclear whether that was in that immediate time period or more generally). "I've got important stuff to worry about," Bannon replied. But Boyle persisted, suggesting it was important for Bannon to know what Assange had coming.
That day, Bannon wrote Stone, "What was that this morning???" Stone explained it as a "Serious security concern," which reflects what WikiLeaks was playing up in real time, partly exploiting a Hillary comment claimed by True Pundit about droning Assange.
And Stone said WikiLeaks would release something each week, which also parrots what Assange had said.
These competing stories may in fact be an attempt to explain away this email, which includes at least a reference to whether or not Assange had been bribed to stop by Clinton's people, and a reference to Stone's efforts to slur Clinton with an accusation of an illegitimate child. (Remember, in this period Michael Cohen was busy paying off a bunch of women to prevent them from going public with stories of their affairs with Trump.)
But that last bit — the "targeted black digital campaign" — is only explained by the NYT as either Stone's Committee for American Sovereignty Education Fund (he also worked on a RAPE PAC with one of his dark money people, which had a similar goal), which is what Stone claimed it was, or to his PAC, Committee to Restore America's Greatness.
The other big outlay Stone was making at the time was for his Stop the Steal voter suppression effort (largely via money raised through CRAG and not kept separate from the dark money group). When Stone got in trouble for those voter suppression efforts, Don McGahn helped bail him out, so whether or not the campaign planned to, they did ultimately associate with Stone's efforts.
In other words, the most damning connotation of that request would pertain to voter suppression, not WikiLeaks.
And, as mentioned, none of this discussion examines the way that Jerome Corsi (before the Podesta emails started coming out) and Stone (relying on the newly released emails but perhaps having had an advance peek at them) recycled Bannon and Rebekah Mercer's own August attack on Hillary using the newly released emails.
I don't know what to make of these emails, except to say that a bunch of shitholes are trying to tell stories about them that leave key holes in the story.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/01/s ... e-stories/
COULD ROGER STONE BE CHARGED IN A CFAA CONSPIRACY?
November 1, 2018/13 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
I just did an extended rant on Twitter about Jonathan Chait's latest attempt to pretend to be covering the Russian investigation. Basically, though, I was making the same point I made in this post: Mueller is not going to charge Roger Stone just for talking to WikiLeaks — or even having advance knowledge about what WikiLeaks planned to do. So to try to understand what Mueller is after, you need more than a Chait-like titillation that Stone exchanged some DMs with Guccifer 2.0 or, much later, WikiLeaks.
In response to that, a number of people suggested that Mueller might charge Stone for conspiracy to hack (under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) after the fact.
You don't charge people for entering into a conspiracy after the crimes have been committed.
In fact, in one of Roger Stone's denials, to Chuck Todd earlier this year, he tried to make this point — that he can't be held responsible for any hacking because the hacking happened before he started interacting with the purported hacker, Guccifer 2.0.
Todd: Why did you reach out to Guccifer? Why did you reach out to Wikileaks?
Stone: First of all, my direct messages with Guccifer 2.0, if that's who it really is, come six weeks, almost six weeks after the DNC emails had been published by Wikileaks. So in order to collude in their hacking, which I had nothing whatsoever to do with, one would have needed a time machine.
And (at least based on what we know) I believe that's true, with respect to the March 19, 2016 hack of John Podesta and the May 25, 2016 exfiltration of the DNC emails. Nothing we know suggests Stone was part of a conspiracy with the Russians that early (though I don't rule it out, particularly given his recruitment of Paul Manafort around the same time as the Podesta hack). Nothing we know says Stone can be shown to have entered into a conspiracy with Russia before the hack of Podesta or the DNC.
But it is not the case that no hacking occurred after Trump and his allies are suspected of entering into a conspiracy. Mueller provided a really remarkable example in the GRU indictment, showing that after Trump asked the Russians for Hillary's emails, they launched a new wave of attacks on targets close to Hillary.
The Conspirators spearphished individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign throughout the summer of 2016. For example, on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.
There's another example in the indictment, involving Stone, which is more subtle.
The indictment summarizes key parts of Stone's conversation with Guccifer 2.0, describing him as someone who "was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump." It describes how Guccifer 2.0 asked Stone if he could be of assistance, then asked him what he thought of a turnout model earlier released to and highlighted by Aaron Nevins (whom the indictment describes as a "a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news"). As the indictment describes, Stone said that that turnout model was "pretty standard."
The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, "thank u for writing back . . . do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?" On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, "please tell me if i can help u anyhow . . . it would be a great pleasure to me." On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, "what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign." The person responded, "[p]retty standard."
It looked like this:
Sometime in September — the indictment is coy about whether it happened before or after September 9 — Russian hackers accessed the DNC's analytics on an AWS server and made a copy, thereby stealing it.
In or around September 2016, the Conspirators also successfully gained access to DNC computers hosted on a third-party cloud-computing service. These computers contained test applications related to the DNC's analytics. After conducting reconnaissance, the Conspirators gathered data by creating backups, or "snapshots," of the DNC's cloud-based systems using the cloud provider's own technology. The Conspirators then moved the snapshots to cloud-based accounts they had registered with the same service, thereby stealing the data from the DNC.
Accessing the Democratic analytics program updated daily — even if, as I've been told happened, the Democrats discovered and shut down this effort before Russians could obtain more valuable trend data — would presumably be far more valuable than leaking a targeting document dating to February 9. It would be far more damning, too, if that theft came after a close associate of the candidate (and the recently departed campaign manager) had poo-pooed the dated targeting data as standard fare, suggesting Trump's team wanted something more valuable.
We don't know what happened to that analytics data after Russia stole it. But the GRU indictment does show not only that Stone was interacting with Guccifer 2.0 before that theft in September, but that he may have even provided feedback about similar information before the theft of more valuable, timely turnout information.
That probably still doesn't get you to a CFAA conspiracy by itself (which is a different matter than a ConFraudUS conspiracy based off accepting a thing of value from a foreigner, for which there's more solid evidence). But the two events taken in tandem suggest Russian hackers may have been responding to feedback from both the candidate and his longtime political advisor Roger Stone. The question, then, is what kind of agreement that responsiveness took part in.
As I disclosed in July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I'm going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/01/c ... with-cfaa/
Roger Stone's story just changed on Russia — again
Roger Stone, former confidante to President Trump, speaks to reporters in September 2017. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
November 1 at 4:53 PM
Earlier this week, longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone told The Washington Post that he hasn't discussed WikiLeaks with anybody from the Trump campaign. Asked about Stephen K. Bannon being asked by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigators about such contacts, Stone was clear in his denial.
"There are no such communications," Stone said, "and if Bannon says there are, he would be dissembling."
That denial has already fallen apart.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Stone emailed with Bannon about WikiLeaks just days before it first started releasing Russia's hacked Hillary Clinton emails. After WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed publicly to have documents related to the U.S. presidential race, Bannon reportedly emailed Stone on Oct. 4: "What was that this morning???" Stone responded: "A load every week going forward."
Stone told The Post on Thursday that he "was unaware of this email exchange until it was leaked."
"We had not turned it up in our search," he added. "We can find no others to campaign officials."
The emails don't necessarily indicate Stone was acting as an intermediary between the campaign and WikiLeaks, which is the central question involving Stone and his role in the broader Russia investigation. Stone was only relaying things Assange had said publicly, after all.
But they do constitute yet another example of Stone saying things about his Russia-related actions that turn out not to be true. And the list of those things has grown quite long.
WikiLeaks contacts
In congressional testimony in September 2017, Stone said, "I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist" — referring to Randy Credico.
We later found out that Stone exchanged direct messages on Twitter with the main WikiLeaks account.
Russian contacts
Last year, Stone repeatedly denied contacts with Russians about the 2016 campaign.
He told The Post, "I didn't talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign."
He told Chuck Todd, moderator of "Meet the Press," "I never had any contact with any Russians."
He made a similar, though perhaps less firm, statement in sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee: "To be clear, I have never represented any Russian clients, have never been to Russia, and never had any communication with any Russians or individuals fronting for Russians, in connection with the 2016 presidential election."
We've since found out that he had, in fact, spoken with a Russian national who called himself Henry Greenberg in May 2016, when the man offered Stone information about Clinton. Trump campaign official Michael Caputo had even texted Stone about "the Russian." Stone has said he merely forgot about the meeting but had his memory refreshed by Mueller showing Caputo the texts.
Being identified in Mueller documents
In July, Stone initially claimed he didn't think he was the unnamed person identified in an indictment from the special counsel as having interacted with the allegedly Russia-affiliated hacker Guccifer 2.0 in 2016. "I don't think it is me, because I wasn't in regular contact with members of the Trump campaign," Stone said.
Mere hours later, he admitted it probably was him — and it turned out he had actually posted the communications to his own website in early 2017.
His sources
Stone at one point claimed Credico was his only source about WikiLeaks, then he later said he was his principal source. Now he has amended that to include emails he had seen.
Stone recently added to his account, saying he had also been tipped about a possible coming WikiLeaks disclosure by viewing an email from James Rosen, then a Fox News reporter, to blogger Charles Ortel. Ortel confirmed to The Post that he had forwarded Stone the email, in which Rosen said he was hearing a major disclosure related to Clinton was in the offing. Rosen declined to comment.
Campaign contacts
In the most recent contradiction, Bannon's emails actually aren't the only things calling Stone's version into question. According to the New York Times's reporting, Bannon and two campaign officials have told investigators that Stone sought to build himself up as an authority on WikiLeaks:
One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks's actions, but that he also took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton's candidacy.
It would seem difficult for Stone to do that if he wasn't actually communicating with the campaign about WikiLeaks.
Again, this isn't damning legally. But it does suggest Stone hasn't been truthful about exactly what happened — repeatedly.
Mueller's grand jury interviews Roger Stone associates, David Lugo and Tyler Nixon, to probe Stone's alleged knowledge of WikiLeaks' plot to release Democratic info stolen by Russia. At least 9 Stone associates have been contacted by Mueller so far.
Two more associates of Roger Stone testify before Mueller grand jury
Rosalind S. Helderman
Two more associates of Roger Stone, the longtime adviser to President Trump, testified recently before a grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election — the latest in a series of witnesses connected to Stone whose testimony has been sought by the special counsel.
David Lugo, a filmmaker who interviewed Stone for a movie, told The Washington Post Tuesday that he has turned over hundreds of text messages, emails and Facebook messages to the grand jury.
Lugo, who was a co-producer on the 2015 Oliver Stone film, "A Good American," also said he testified on Oct. 19 before the grand jury about conversations about WikiLeaks he had with a onetime friend of Stone, New York comedian Randy Credico.
Separately, attorney Tyler Nixon, another Stone associate, confirmed to The Post that he testified before the grand jury Friday.
The appearances by Lugo and Nixon underscore how intensely special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is pursuing the question of whether Stone had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks's plans to release hacked Democratic emails that roiled the 2016 campaign and damaged Hillary Clinton's White House bid. At least nine Stone associates have been contacted by prosecutors so far.
A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
In July, Mueller's prosecutors charged 12 Russian military officers with engineering the hack of Democratic accounts and giving the emails to WikiLeaks.
Stone has denied any contact with WikiLeaks and said he did not know the content of material before it was published.
Both Lugo and Nixon told The Post last month that Credico acknowledged in conversations being the source of material for Stone's statements and tweets about WikiLeaks.
Another Stone associate, conservative author Jerome Corsi, was interviewed by Mueller's team over three days last week and appears to be emerging as a key witness, according to a person familiar with the sessions who requested anonymity to describe the ongoing investigation.
Stone has said that research by Corsi about Clinton campaign chief John Podesta and his lobbyist brother Tony prompted him to tweet "it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel" on Aug. 21, 2016. The tweet came about six weeks before WikiLeaks began publishing emails hacked from John Podesta's account.
David Gray, a lawyer for Corsi, declined to comment.
Lugo said Tuesday that his testimony before the grand jury was focused on Credico, another significant player in the Stone saga.
Stone has said Credico was his principal source of information about WikiLeaks, an allegation Credico denies. Stone also identified Credico as his source in a letter to the House Intelligence Committee last year.
During his 35- to 45-minute appearance, Lugo said, prosecutors asked him about communications he had with Credico in the spring of 2017. The Post reported last month that Credico had sent a text message to Lugo in which the comic appeared to acknowledge that he provided inside information about WikiLeaks to Stone.
In the message, which Lugo provided to The Post, Credico said: "I knew Rodger [sic] was going to name me sooner or later and so I told you that I'm the so-called back Channel."
Lugo was called to testify two days before The Post published its story.
Credico said Tuesday in a text message to The Post that Lugo is an "alt-right Stone acolyte. Rodger [sic] hypnotizes guy to do all of this."
Credico added that Lugo "would die for Rodger Stone . . . Don't you understand that stone put them up to this."
Stone noted in a message to The Post Tuesday that Lugo and Nixon testified under oath about their experiences. "I have no hypnotic powers," he said.
[Roger Stone helped Donald Trump get elected president — now he's helping himself]
The Post reported last month that Nixon attended a dinner during which he said Credico acknowledged being Stone's WikiLeaks source.
Nixon confirmed Tuesday he was called to appear before the grand jury after the publication of The Post's story, but he did not provide details about his testimony. His appearance was first reported by the Daily Caller.
During Lugo's grand jury appearance, the filmmaker said prosecutors asked him about messages that he claims show Credico attempting to intimidate him not to reveal conversations about whether the comic was a Stone source. Lugo said he told the grand jury that Credico tried to pressure him to be silent by threatening to "call me out as an extreme right winger and a disciple of Roger Stone."
Lugo said he also testified about communications with Credico regarding the possibility of the comic helping to set up an interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for a film he was working on about online censorship called "Sensational." Credico had previously interviewed Assange on his radio program.
Lugo said he told grand jurors that the comedian wanted Lugo to film him last year conducting an interview with Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been detained for years. The interview never happened.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... f775b466b9
Ken Dilanian
@KenDilanianNBC
Follow Follow @KenDilanianNBC
BREAKING: Roger Stone pal Jerome Corsi tells my colleague @annaschecter that Mueller's investigators informed Corsi about a week ago he will be indicted for perjury. "When they have your emails and phone records...they're very good at the perjury trap," he says.
Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
Ben Collins Retweeted Natasha Bertrand
Just for a timeline here...
Michael Cohen, who was in DC with lawyers today, traveled to Italy from July 9 to 17 in 2016.
This is a month after the Trump Tower meeting.
The Republican National Convention started July 18th.
July 22nd, the DNC emails were dropped by Wikileaks.
Natasha Bertrand
@NatashaBertrand
Follow Follow @NatashaBertrand
Natasha Bertrand Retweeted Natasha Bertrand
Corsi says he was questioned extensively about a trip he took to Italy with his wife 2 years ago...he says it was for their anniversary.
Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi on his livestream: "I'm gonna be indicted. That's what we're told. I'm fully expecting it." He then asks for donations to his legal defense fund.
2:09 PM - 12 Nov 2018
Roger Stone repeatedly claimed contact with Donald Trump and his campaign while touting WikiLeaks connections
Roger Stone during an appearance on Anderson Cooper 360.
(CNN)Roger Stone claimed on several occasions during the 2016 presidential race that he was in communication with Donald Trump and his campaign, including declaring that he on average spoke with Trump weekly.
The nature of that communication is now part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the election. Stone is facing scrutiny for his claims to have had a backchannel to WikiLeaks during the campaign. Particularly, as CNN has previously reported, investigators are looking into whether Stone shared information that he believed was from WikiLeaks with members of Trump's presidential campaign, according to a source familiar with the probe.
Stone repeatedly said during the election that he had communicated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange through a "backchannel," "intermediary" or "mutual acquaintance."
But Stone has issued conflicting and often inaccurate statements on his knowledge about the timing and content of WikiLeaks disclosures. He's also offered conflicting information in public comments about his backchannel's relationship to Assange, repeatedly commenting in 2016 that the person spoke with Assange.
In his November 2017 Facebook post outing New York progressive activist and radio host Randy Credico as his backchannel, Stone said that Credico never confirmed WikiLeaks information with Assange himself and instead had different contacts for WikiLeaks information.
Earlier this month, Stone revealed he discussed information about forthcoming WikiLeaks dumps with then-Trump campaign chief executive Steve Bannon. Stone has denied he shared that information with Trump, and Trump denied to The Associated Press last year he knew about the forthcoming WikiLeaks dumps of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's emails in advance.
CNN's KFile reviewed Stone's 2016 media appearances that happened after he began claiming contact with WikiLeaks. In those appearances, Stone does not say whether he discussed WikiLeaks with Trump or the campaign, but repeatedly claims contact with both, including direct conversations with Trump.
Here's a timeline of Stone's comments:
August 4, 2016: Stone says on Infowars radio he spoke to Trump one day earlier. Stone claims in the same interview that Assange has proof of Clinton Foundation scandals.
"I spoke to a Donald Trump, uh, yesterday. He's in good spirits," Stone said.
"The Clinton campaign narrative that the Russians favor Donald Trump and the Russians are leaking this information, this is inoculation because as you said earlier, they know what is coming and it is devastating," Stone later adds. "Let's remember that their defense to all the Clinton Foundation scandals has been not 'we didn't do,' has been 'you have no proof, yes but you have no proof.' Well, I think Julian Assange has that proof and I think he is going to furnish it to the American people."
August 4, 2016: Stone responding on a conference call to a question about Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, says he recommend to Trump that he should hire Manafort, a former business partner of Stone's in the 1980s.
"I recommended him to Donald, because he called me on a Friday concerned about the fact that he had just been robbed of delegates in Louisiana."
Stone added later in the call, "Julian Assange is going to continue to drop information on the American voters that is going to roil this race."
August 17, 2016: Stone claims on Miami local radio he spoke in favor of adding Bannon and Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway to the campaign. Stone claims he spoke to Manafort that morning.
"I was in favor of these additions. I have spoken in favor of them internally over the last couple of days," Stone said. "Manafort's not going anywhere. I spoke to him this morning. He's very pleased with this expansion. He was in favor of it. I was in favor of it
August 21, 2016: Stone says on Baltimore local radio he was in on the deliberations about Manafort leaving the campaign. Manafort left the campaign two days earlier on August 19.
"Manafort is a close friend. I was in on his deliberations and the situation," Stone says.
August 22, 2016: Speaking again on Miami local radio, Stone claims to have repeatedly spoken to Manafort about Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign.
"Putting the campaign and Trump first, Manafort resigned," Stone said. "It was not an easy decision. We talked about it several times. I think he's done the right thing. Steve Bannon who comes into the campaign as the new CEO, is a bomb-thrower in the Roger Stone mold. He is a good friend of mine."
September 16, 2016: Asked on Boston Herald Radio if he'd told Trump his view that he should release his tax returns, Stone said, "He is aware of my view." Stone said he's in touch with Assange "through an intermediary."
September 18, 2016: Stone says on "Morano in the Morning" on local New York radio that he spoke to Manafort the day before, adding that Manafort told him that he was "keeping in touch with a lot of friends in the campaign."
September 21, 2016: Stone claims on "The Joe Piscopo Show" on local New York radio that he spoke to Trump late the night before on the phone.
"Roger, you spoke with Donald Trump," Piscopo said. "It was like 3:00 in the morning, you told me?"
"He is, uh, very nocturnal," Stone said. "This guy gets very little sleep, he requires very little sleep. He is on the phone calling around the country to friends, talking to people. He'll call you. You don't call him at 3:00 in the morning. Three is a little bit of an exaggeration, but you know, 1:30, 1:00, 1:30, he's still up. He's still working."
November 2, 2016: Stone claims he spoke to Trump once a week on average, according to The Guardian.
November 11, 2016: Stone tells Infowars radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that he spoke to President-elect Trump the night before.
"I spoke to President-elect Trump last night at some length on a broad variety of topics and I'm not really at liberty to discuss that," Stone said. "But let me just say that he is, first of all, very grateful to the Infowars.com audience. He knows that you are the centerpiece of the resistance. He knows that he has gotten better treatment here than from anyone in the mainstream media. He is a very grateful and very thankful for your support and the support of your audience."
Exclusive text messages show Roger Stone and friend discussing WikiLeaks plans
Nov. 14, 2018 / 4:36 PM CST
Six days before WikiLeaks began releasing Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails, Roger Stone had a text message conversation with a friend about WikiLeaks, according to copies of phone records obtained exclusively by NBC News.
"Big news Wednesday," the Stone pal, radio host Randy Credico, wrote on Oct. 1, 2016, according to the text messages provided by Stone. "Now pretend u don't know me."
"U died 5 years ago," Stone replied.
"Great," Credico wrote back. "Hillary's campaign will die this week."
Credico turned out to be wrong on one count — nothing incriminating about Clinton came out that Wednesday. But two days later, on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks released its first dump of emails stolen from Podesta, altering the trajectory of the 2016 presidential election.
Stone, a confidante of then-candidate Donald Trump and notorious political trickster, has denied any collusion with WikiLeaks.
But the text messages provided by Stone to NBC News show that Credico appeared to be providing regular updates to Stone on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's plans in the days before the hacked emails were released. In the texts, Credico told Stone he had insights into Assange's plans through a longtime friend, who was also Assange's lawyer, according to the text messages.
New York radio host Randy Credico appeared before the grand jury hearing evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Sept. 7, 2018, in Washington.Jacquelyn Martin / AP file
Reached Wednesday, Credico downplayed the text exchanges. "There's absolutely nothing there that I had any knowledge of anything that Assange was going to do because I didn't," he told NBC News.
"Where's the smoking gun?" he added.
Stone said the messages support the story he's been telling all along. "These text messages prove beyond dispute that Randy Credico was the source who told me of the significance of the material that Julian Assange told CNN he had and would publish in June 2016 and that Credico's source was indeed a woman attorney who worked for WikiLeaks," Stone said. "If Randy said anything different to the grand jury, he perjured himself under oath."
Stone's lawyer Grant Smith said the messages vindicate his client.
"The texts provided to NBC News demonstrate that my client, Roger Stone, has been consistent for the past two years in his assertion that Randy Credico was the person who was providing him what limited information Mr. Stone had regarding WikiLeaks," Smith said.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Stone had any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to publish Podesta's emails, according to people familiar with the investigation. Nearly a dozen Stone associates have been summoned by Mueller to appear before his Washington grand jury, the sources said.
The text messages obtained by NBC News appear to show that Stone and Credico exchanged messages about Assange having damaging information about Clinton at least as early as Aug. 27, 2016. The texts show that at 6:07 p.m. that day, Credico wrote to Stone, "Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary."
Stone did not appear to reply to that particular message but the conversations ramped up over the following weeks.
"I think it's on for tomorrow," Credico texted Stone on Oct. 3, 2016, according to the messages obtained by NBC News.
The message is time-stamped 2:42 p.m. About 40 minutes earlier, Stone fired off a tweet suggesting he had intimate knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans. It's not clear if a time zone difference meant that Stone had already received Credico's message, or if there was another reason behind the timing of his tweet.
"I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp," read Stone's tweet.
Later that day, Credico texted Stone asking, "Why can't you get Trump to come out and say that he would give Julian Assange Asylum[?]" according to the texts obtained by NBC News.
The texts appear to show that Credico sent another message less than three hours later: "Off the Record Hillary and her people are doing a full-court press they keep Assange from making the next dump…That's all I can tell you on this line…Please leave my name out of it."
Stone responded with a question: "So nothing will happen tonight?" according to the texts obtained by NBC News.
Credico responded: "tuesday….There is so much stuff out there… There will be an announcement but not on the balcony."
Credico followed up five minutes later: "And by the way your friend did not have a meeting with Julian Assange that's a complete lie."
Stone replied: "How would u know, rummy?" according to the texts obtained by NBC News.
According to Stone, the "friend" the men were referring to was blogger Charles Ortel, who Stone mistakenly thought had met with Assange.
Credico responded to that message: "Because I'm best friends with [Assange's] lawyer and leave it at that and leave it alone."
The lawyer Credico referred to is Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Kunstler declined requests for comment.
The next day, Oct. 4, Assange announced that his organization would publish emails related to the 2016 campaign.
The email dump actually came three days later, only hours after The Washington Post released a recording of a lewd conversation between then-candidate Donald Trump and TV host Billy Bush.
Anna Schecter is a producer for the investigations unit of NBC News.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justic ... ns-n936371
ROGER STONE AND JEROME CORSI'S MATRYOSHKA COVER-UP
December 4, 2018/3 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
I want to reverse engineer the serial cover-ups that Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone have attempted, at least as disclosed by Corsi's leaked statement of the offense.
I will assume, for this post's purposes, that Corsi and Stone not only learned that John Podesta's emails were going to be released, but also at least some information about what they would contain, as laid out in these two posts. Given the elaborate cover-up I'm about to lay out, it seems likely that where and how they learned that is quite sensitive.
THE IMMEDIATE COVER STORY (PROBABLY FOR KNOWLEDGE THAT JOULE HOLDING DOCUMENTS WOULD BE RELEASED)
The first cover-up, at least according to Corsi, came within a month of the time whatever they're trying to cover-up happened. Nine days after Stone tweeted that it would soon be Podesta's time in the barrel, he called Corsi and asked him to invent an alternate explanation for it.
He said in an interview Tuesday that Mr. Stone called him on Aug. 30, 2016—nine days after the tweet—and asked Mr. Corsi for help in creating an "alternative explanation" for it.
Shortly after that conversation, Mr. Corsi said he began writing a memo for Mr. Stone about Mr. Podesta's business dealings. In the following months, both Mr. Stone and Mr. Corsi said the memo was the inspiration for his tweet, even though it was in fact written afterward, Mr. Corsi said.
"What I construct, and what I testified to the grand jury, was I believed I was creating a cover story for Roger, because Roger wanted to explain this tweet," Mr. Corsi said. "By the way, the special counsel knew this. They can virtually tell my keystrokes on that computer."
In the version of the story Corsi told Chuck Ross, he seems to have forgotten the parts of the phone call where he and Stone explained why it was so important he have a cover story.
Corsi writes that his alleged cover up plan with Stone began on Aug. 30, 2016, when Stone emailed him asking to speak on the phone.
"I have no precise recollection of that phone call," writes Corsi, adding, "But from what happened next, I have reconstructed that in the phone call Stone told me he was getting heat for his tweet and needed some cover."
Corsi claimed he had begun researching John Podesta's business links to Russia and believed the research "would make an excellent cover-story for Stone's unfortunate Tweet."
Corsi writes that in his phone call later that evening, "I suggested Stone could use me as an excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for Stone's prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle barrel."
"I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange had Podesta emails that he planned to drop as the 'October Surprise,' calculated by Assange to deliver a knock-out blow to Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations."
Corsi emailed the nine-page memo to Stone the following day.
"So you knew this was a lie when you wrote the Podesta email," Zelinsky asked Corsi during one question-and-answer session, he writes.
"Yes, I did," Corsi responded. "In politics, it's not unusual to create alternative explanations to deflect the attacks of your political opponents."
Corsi's report — as I detailed here — made no sense and makes even less now that we know that Paul Manafort ordered Tony Podesta to hide his Ukrainian consulting, but it distracted from a focus on Joule Holdings that Stone and Corsi had been focused on earlier that month and would return to after the Podesta emails were released in October.
WHEN SSCI ANNOUNCES ITS INVESTIGATION, CORSI ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY EVIDENCE OF (PROBABLY JOULE HOLDING) KNOWLEDGE PRIOR TO OCTOBER 11
According to Corsi's draft statement of the offense, he deleted all of his email from before October 11 sometime after January 13, 2017.
Between approximately January 13, 2017 and March 1, 2017, CORSI deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016, including Person 1's email instructing CORSI to "get to [the founder of Organization 1]" and CORSI's subsequent forwarding of that email to the overseas individual.
There are several things that might explain that date. It was the day after Guccifer 2.0 returned to WordPress to insist he wasn't a GRU persona. It was days after Obama's top spooks talked about the Intelligence Community Assessment of the Russian attack, which found that Guccifer 2.0 was a GRU operation. It was the day that the Senate Intelligence Committee announced its investigation.
And January 19 was the day the NYT reported that Stone was under investigation.
Mr. Manafort is among at least three Trump campaign advisers whose possible links to Russia are under scrutiny. Two others are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.
The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department's financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said.
Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump's, said in a speech in Florida last summer that he had communicated with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published the hacked Democratic emails. During the speech, Mr. Stone predicted further leaks of documents, a prediction that came true within weeks.
In a brief interview on Thursday, Mr. Stone said he had never visited Russia and had no Russian clients. He said that he had worked in Ukraine for a pro-Western party, but that any assertion that he had ties to Russian intelligence was "nonsense" and "totally false."
Stone falsely claims that the story said he himself was wiretapped (it said Manafort was); he dates it to January 20, when it appeared in the dead tree NYT.
According to the New York Times, I was under surveillance by the Obama administration in 2016. They wrote that on January 20, 2017.
In any case, as I've noted, October 11 is the date when the Peter Smith crowd discussed their pleasure with the Podesta emails in coded language.
"[A]n email in the 'Robert Tyler' [foldering] account [showing] Mr. Smith obtained $100,000 from at least four financiers as well as a $50,000 contribution from Mr. Smith himself." The email was dated October 11, 2016 and has the subject line, "Wire Instructions—Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative." It came from someone calling himself "ROB," describing the funding as supporting "the Washington Scholarship Fund for the Russian students." The email also notes, "The students are very pleased with the email releases they have seen, and are thrilled with their educational advancement opportunities." The WSJ states that Ortel is not among the funders named in the email, which means they know who the other four funders are (if one or more were a source for the story, it might explain why WSJ is not revealing that really critical piece of news).
And it's the date when WikiLeaks released the Podesta emails that had Joule Holdings documents attached.
Thus, it seems likely that Corsi, at least, was trying hide that he had foreknowledge of what WikiLeaks ended up dropping on that day.
CORSI PACKAGES UP THE PAST AUGUST'S COVER STORY PUBLICLY
Then, on March 23, 2017, Corsi packaged up the cover story he had laid the groundwork for the previous year. In doing so, however, he acknowledges the common thread of Joule starting on August 1.
Having reviewed my records, I am now confident that I am the source behind Stone's tweet.
Here is the timeline showing how I got Roger Stone on the track of following the real story – that Podesta played a key role in the Clintons' plan to get paid by Putin.
Note how carefully he postdates the report — which he has testified before the grand jury he wrote very quickly on August 30 — to August 14.
MAKING A COVER STORY ABOUT THE CREDICO COVER STORY
On September 26, 2017, Stone testified to HPSCI. He gave no name for his go-between with WikiLeaks. But later that fall, he privately gave them Randy Credico's name and then released it publicly, claiming that Credico had accurately predicted what would come when.
Randy Credico is a good man. He's extraordinarily talented. He's come back from personal adversity .He often using Street theater and satire to illustrate the hypocrisy of our current drug laws and in his fight for Prison reform. He is a fighter for Justice.The Committee is wasting their time. He merely confirmed what Assange had said publicly. He was correct. Wikileaks did have the goods on Hillary and they did release them.
Credico's three interviews of Julian Assange on WBAI are an example of excellent radio journalism.
Credico merelyconfirmed for Mr. Stone the accuracy of Julian Assange's interview of June 12, 2016 with the British ITV network, where Assange said he had "e-mails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,"
. [sic] Credico never said he knew or had any information as to source or content of the material. Mr. Credico never said he confirmed this information with Mr. Assange himself. Mr. Stone knew Credico had his own sources within Wikileaks and is credible. Credico turned out to be 100 % accurate.
I initially declined to identify Randy for the Committee fearing that exposure would be used to hurt his professional career and because our conversation was off-the-record and he is journalist. Indeed when his name surfaced in this he was fired at WBAI Radio where he had the highest rated show.
I want to reiterate there is nothing illegal or improper communicating with Julian Assange or Wikileaks. There is no proof Assange or Wikleaks are Russian assets.The CIA's "assesment" is bullshit.Credico has done nothing wrong.
Then HPSCI subpoenaed Credico, meaning they would check Stone's cover story (as Mueller has been doing for nine months). Stone apparently told Credico to invoke the Fifth rather than admit that he really wasn't that go-between.
At that point, Stone asked Corsi to start backing that cover story.
After the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ("HPSCI"), the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ("SSCI"), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") began inquiring in 2017 about Person 1's connections with Organization 1, CORSI communicated with Person 1 about developments in those investigations. For example, on or about November 28, 2017, after Person 1 had identified to HPSCI a certain individual ("Person 2") as his "source" or "intermediary" to Organization 1, Person 2 received a subpoena compelling his testimony before HPSCI, and Person 1 learned of the subpoena. On or about November 30, 2017, Person 1 asked CORSI to write publicly about Person 2. CORSI responded: "Are you sure you want to make something out of this now? Why not wait to see what [Person 2] does? You may be defending yourself too much – raising new questions that will fuel new inquiries. This may be a time to say less, not more." Person 1 responded by telling CORSI that the other individual "will take the 5th—but let's hold a day."
PRESSURING CREDICO TO SUSTAIN THE COVER STORY
Finally, sometimes this spring — as Mueller started systematically working through Stone's associates — Stone pressured Credico not to contest his public claim that he was Stone's go-between, going so far as threatening him.
"I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die cock sucker," Stone messaged Credico on April 9. Stone was responding to a message from Credico that indicated Credico would release information contradicting Stone's claims about the 2016 election and that "all will come out."
CORSI'S LIES TO PROSECUTORS
As bad luck would have it for Corsi, Mueller's team interviewed him, not Stone. That meant he was the first person to have to sustain this cover story with the FBI (though of course Stone already did with HPSCI).
When asked on September 6 and (apparently) on September 10, Corsi claimed not to have remembered that he was Stone's journalist cut-out all this time.
CORSI said he declined the request from Person 1 and made clear to Person 1 that trying to contact Organization 1 could be subject to investigation. CORSI also stated that Person 1 never asked CORSI to have another person try to get in contact with Organization 1, and that CORSI told Person 1 that they should just wait until Organization 1 released any materials.
CORSI further stated that after that initial request from Person 1, CORSI did not know what Person 1 did with respect to Organization 1, and he never provided Person 1 with any information regarding Organization 1, including what materials Organization 1 possessed or what Organization 1 might do with those materials.
He arranged that — the outer layer of the Matryoshka cover story — with his lawyer even before he got asked any questions. Which is going to make his currently operative cover story — that he didn't remember crafting a multi-level cover story with Stone over the course of over a year — because he had deleted some of the emails reflecting that (but not, apparently, the ones from fall 2017).
It's fairly clear, this Matryoshka cover-up has become part of Mueller's investigation. It all suggests that whatever lies inside that last little doll is something so damning that the guy with the Nixon tattoo allowed the cover-up to become a second crime.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/04/r ... -cover-up/
INFORMATION IN AMENDED DNC LAWSUIT REVEALS THAT ROGER STONE IS AT SIGNIFICANTLY GREATER RISK FOR CFAA INDICTMENT
December 9, 2018/41 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
Back in November, I wrote a post considering whether Roger Stone could be charged in a CFAA conspiracy. I noted that the last hack noted in the GRU indictment may have post-dated communications Stone had with Guccifer 2.0, in which Stone scoffed at the analytical information released as part of the DCCC hack. I pointed to this passage from the GRU indictment, showing that the GRU hack of the DNC analytics hosted on an AWS server may have post-dated those conversations between Guccifer 2.0 and Stone.
I'm writing a response to the Wikileaks defense against the DNC lawsuit for its involvements in the 2016 election attack, and so have only now gotten around to reading the amended complaint against Stone and others that the DNC filed in the wake of the GRU indictment. And it reveals that the AWS hack was far worse than described in the GRU indictment — and it continued well after that Stone conversation with Guccifer 2.0.
None of this long passage is footnoted in the complaint. It has to be based on the DNC's own knowledge of the AWS hack.
On September 20, 2016, CrowdStrike's monitoring service discovered that unauthorized users—later discovered to be GRU officers—had accessed the DNC's cloud-computing service. The cloud-computing service housed test applications related to the DNC's analytics. The DNC's analytics are its most important, valuable, and highly confidential tools. While the DNC did not detect unauthorized access to its voter file, access to these test applications could have provided the GRU with the ability to see how the DNC was evaluating and processing data critical to its principal goal of winning elections. Forensic analysis showed that the unauthorized users had stolen the contents of these virtual servers by making exact duplicates ("snapshots") of them and moving those snapshots to other accounts they owned on the same service. The GRU stole multiple snapshots of these virtual servers between September 5, 2016 and September 22, 2016. The U.S. government later concluded that this cyberattack had been executed by the GRU as part of its broader campaign to damage to the Democratic party.
In 2016, the DNC used Amazon Web Services ("AWS"), an Amazon-owned company that provides cloud computing space for businesses, as its "data warehouse" for storing and analyzing almost all of its data.
To store and analyze the data, the DNC used a software program called Vertica, which was run on the AWS servers. Vertica is a Hewlett Packard program, which the DNC licensed. The data stored on Vertica included voter contact information, such as the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of voters, and notes from the DNC's prior contacts with these voters. The DNC also stored "digital information" on AWS servers. "Digital information" included data about the DNC's online engagement, such as DNC email lists, the number of times internet users click on DNC advertisements (or "click rates"), and the number of times internet users click on links embedded in DNC emails (or "engagement rates"). The DNC also used AWS to store volunteer information—such as the list of people who have signed up for DNC-sponsored events and the number of people who attended those events.
Vertica was used to both store DNC data and organize the data so that DNC computer engineers could access it. To use the Vertica data, DNC employees could not simply type a plain-English question into the database. Instead, DNC engineers needed to write lines of computer code that instructed Vertica to search for and display a data set. The computer engineers' coded requests for data are called "queries."
When the DNC wanted to access and use the data it collected, the DNC described the information it wanted to retrieve, and DNC computer engineers designed and coded the appropriate "queries" to produce that data. These queries are secret, sensitive work product developed by the DNC for the purpose of retrieving specific cross-sections of information in order to develop political, financial, and voter engagement strategies and services. Many of these queries are used or intended for use in interstate commerce. The DNC derives value from these queries by virtue of their secrecy: if made public, these queries would reveal critical insights into the DNC's political, financial, and voter engagement strategies. DNC computer engineers could save Vertica queries that they run repeatedly. In 2016, some of the DNC's most frequently used Vertica queries—which revealed fundamental elements of the DNC's political and financial strategies— were stored on the AWS servers.
When the DNC wanted to analyze its data to look for helpful patterns or trends, the DNC used another piece of software called Tableau. Tableau is commercial software not developed by DNC engineers. Instead, the DNC purchased a license for the Tableau software, and ran the software against Vertica.
Using Tableau, the DNC was able to develop graphs, maps, and other visual reports based on the data stored on Vertica. When the DNC wanted to visualize the data it collected, the DNC described the information it wanted to examine, and DNC computer engineers designed and coded the appropriate "Tableau queries" to produce that data in the form requested. These Tableau queries are secret, sensitive work product developed by the DNC for the purpose of transforming its raw data into useful visualizations. The DNC derives value from these queries by virtue of their secrecy: if made public, these queries would reveal critical insights into the DNC's political, financial, and voter engagement strategies and services. Many of these queries are used or intended for use in interstate commerce.
DNC computer engineers could also save Tableau queries that they ran repeatedly. In 2016, some of the DNC's most frequently used Tableau queries—which revealed fundamental elements of the DNC's political and financial strategies—were stored on the AWS servers.
The DNC's Vertica queries and Tableau Queries that allow DNC staff to analyze their data and measure their progress toward their strategic goals—collectively, the DNC's "analytics,"—are its most important, valuable, and highly confidential tools. Because these tools were so essential, the DNC would often test them before they were used broadly.
The tests were conducted using "testing clusters"—designated portions of the AWS servers where the DNC tests new pieces of software, including new Tableau and Vertica Queries. To test a new query, a DNC engineer could use the query on a "synthetic" data set—mock-up data generated for the purpose of testing new software—or a small set of real data. For example, the DNC might test a Tableau query by applying the software to a set of information from a specific state or in a specific age range. Thus, the testing clusters housed sensitive, proprietary pieces of software under development. As described above, the DNC derives significant value from its proprietary software by virtue of its secrecy: if made public, it would reveal critical insights into the DNC's political, financial, and voter engagement strategies and services, many of which are used or intended for use in interstate commerce.
The DNC protected all of the data and code in its AWS servers by, among other things, restricting access to authorized users. To gain access to the AWS servers themselves, an authorized user had to take multiple steps. First, the authorized user would have to log onto a Virtual Private Network (VPN) using a unique username and password. Second, once the user entered a valid and password, the system would send a unique six-digit code (PIN) to the authorized user's phone, and the user would have 30 seconds to type it into the computer system. This two-step process is commonly known as "two-factor authentication."
Authorized users would also employ a two-factor authentication system to access Tableau visualizations. First, they would log into a Google account with a unique username and password, and then they would enter a pin sent to their cell phones.
Finally, the DNC's AWS servers were protected with firewalls and cybersecurity best practices, including: (a) limiting the IP addresses and ports with which users could access servers; (b) auditing user account activities; and (c) monitoring authentication and access attempts.
On September 20, 2016, CrowdStrike's monitoring service discovered that unauthorized users had breached DNC AWS servers that contained testing clusters. Further forensic analysis showed that the unauthorized users had stolen the contents of these DNC AWS servers by taking snapshots of the virtual servers, and had moved those replicas to other AWS accounts they controlled. The GRU stole multiple snapshots of these servers between September 5, 2016 and September 22, 2016. The U.S. later concluded that this cyberattack had been executed by the GRU as part of its broader campaign to damage to the Democratic party. The GRU could have derived significant economic value from the theft of the DNC's data by, among other possibilities, selling the data to the highest bidder.
The software would also be usable as executable code by DNC opponents, who could attempt to re-create DNC data visualizations or derive DNC strategy decisions by analyzing the tools the DNC uses to analyze its data. [my emphasis]
In other words, at least one of those snapshots was stolen after Stone suggested he would like better analytics data than what GRU had publicly released via HelloFL. So he can no longer say that his communications with Guccifer 2.0 preceded all the hacking. Which the nifty timeline Stone's attorney submitted in conjunction with his motion to dismiss doesn't account for at all.
Given Stone's history of non-denial denials for crimes he commits, I'd say this stunted timeline doesn't help him much.
Here's Stone's motion to dismiss. As with his nifty timeline, he does not address — at all — the communications between him and Guccifer 2.0 regarding analytics. It does, however, include this tagline.
He is the First Amendment running, not walking; but his conduct cannot be adjudged a civil wrong.
Past history says Stone's rat-fuckery tends to be easily found in his swiss cheese denials, and I'd say this is one example.
Note that, a week after DNC submitted its amended complaint on October 4, WikiLeaks released a proprietary AWS document showing the locations of all AWS's servers around the world — something that is not all that newsworthy, but something that would be incredibly valuable for those trying to compromise AWS. That was one of its only releases since the crackdown on Assange has intensified.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/09/i ... ndictment/
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2018 8:36 am
Roger Stone has to settle a defamation lawsuit by publishing ads in the Wall Street Journal and other places apologizing.
Roger Stone Admits Spreading Lies on InfoWars
Trump adviser made the admission in settling a defamation suit brought against him by an exiled Chinese businessman
Shelby Holliday Updated Dec. 17, 2018 7:44 p.m. ET
As questions swirl about his credibility, former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone settled a defamation suit seeking $100 million in damages on Monday for publishing false and misleading statements on InfoWars.com, a far-right website known for promoting conspiracy theories.
The agreement requires Mr. Stone to run ads in national newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, apologizing for making defamatory statements about a Chinese businessman who is a vocal critic of Beijing. It also requires Mr. Stone to publish a...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roger-ston ... 1545093097
The Nunes coverup is over
CERTIFIED COPY.....ROGER STONE IS GOING TO BE INDICTED SOON AFTER JANUARY 3 WHEN THE DEMS GIVE IT TO MUELLER
Robert Mueller requested Roger Stone Congressional testimony — signaling he may be pursing charges
Robert Mueller and Roger Stone, composite image.
Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday requested a transcript of longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone's testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The newspaper speculated the document request was "a sign that prosecutors could be moving to charge him with a crime."
"It is the first time Mueller has formally asked the committee to turn over material the panel has gathered in its investigation of Russian interference of the 2016 campaign, according to the people," Post reported. "The move suggests that the special counsel is moving to finalize his months-long investigation of Stone — a key part of Mueller's inquiry into whether anyone in President Trump's orbit coordinated with the Russians."
"I don't think any reasonable attorney who looks at it would conclude that I committed perjury, which requires intent and materiality," Stone said.
Former assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner disagreed.
"That suggests prosecutors are getting ready to bring a charge," Kirschner said. "Prosecutors can't bring a charge without an original certified copy of the transcript that shows the witness lied."
Democratic members of the committee have been publicly telegraphing that they believe Stone may have committed the crime of lying to Congress.
In March, House Democrats sought a "criminal referral" against Stone
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/robert ... ssion=true
The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to release documents regarding Roger Stone's testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Lyndon LaRouche Is Still Alive and He's Been Hobnobbing With Roger Stone
The international cult leader has long-standing ties to Russia—and Robert Mueller.
Shilpa Jindia
Eleven days after President Donald Trump's election, Roger Stone, a longtime self-proclaimed GOP dirty trickster and Trump adviser, invited an unusual guest on his short-lived radio show, Stone Cold Truth, and began the interview with a question about former President Bill Clinton. "Well, I think the question of Bill Clinton is sometimes confused. Bill was framed," Lyndon LaRouche replied. "And he was framed by the Queen of England."
It was typical fare from LaRouche, the 96-year-old leader of a fascist political cult group that has long pitched a variety of dark conspiracy theories, including his pet notion that a Zionist British aristocratic oligarchy secretly orchestrates world events. The queen has long been a favored villain of LaRouche, who has claimed she presides over the international narcotics trade. He has also accused Henry Kissinger of being a Soviet double agent, and has led a campaign for opera to be sung at a lower pitch. While LaRouche's followers and their wild ideas have been a sideshow for five decades—as they have distributed leaflets and crashed political events—he earned surprising prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, before a 1988 federal conviction for mail fraud sent him to prison for five years.
"Totally unproven charges of Russian collusion are a smokescreen."
Stone's recent association with LaRouche is consistent with his decades-long evolution from a mainstream GOP operative to an advocate and ally of the conspiratorial and political fringe. Stone is reportedly being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining his possible interactions during the 2016 campaign with WikiLeaks ahead of its releases of emails stolen by Russian government hackers. (Mueller himself is no stranger to LaRouche; he was a key player in the 1980s investigation that sent LaRouche to jail.) Despite all the scrutiny over Stone's role in the 2016 campaign, his alignment with a political group that the Heritage Foundation once described as a "strange asset for the KGB's disinformation effort" remains a little-examined aspect of his recent activities.
Also under-examined has been a tantalizing clue about possible ties between LaRouche's organization and Moscow. Buried in Christopher Steele's dossier on Trump's possible links to Russia was an August 2016 report with this allegation: A "Kremlin official involved in US relations" had claimed that Russia facilitated a LaRouche delegation's trip to Moscow, offering members of LaRouche's group assistance and enlisting them in an effort to disseminate "compromising information" as part of the Kremlin's 2016 influence campaign. A lawyer with ties to both Stone and LaRouche's network has claimed that he introduced Stone to a key LaRouche aide in early 2016, as Trump began to secure the Republican nomination.
While Stone's interactions with the LaRouche crowd may at first blush seem bizarre, Stone himself has long been a conspiracy theorist. In 2014, he published a book claiming that Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And in recent years, he has forged a political alliance with Alex Jones, the chieftain of Infowars who has peddled noxious conspiracy theories, including the claim that the 2012 Newtown massacre was a hoax.
This July, Stone delivered a video address to a LaRouche gathering in Germany, where LaRouche, who is in declining health, and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, now live. Stone seemed eager to embrace LaRouche and win over the crowd, recounting how he had "evolved" to embrace the "extraordinary and prophetic thinking" of LaRouche. Stone said he first met LaRouche in New Hampshire in 1980 during one of LaRouche's many failed presidential campaigns, while Stone was working as an aide to Ronald Reagan. Noting he was a more "conventional conservative" at the time, Stone remarked that he then believed that "Dr. LaRouche's views were somewhat exotic."
Steele's dossier includes talk of a LaRouche delegation to Moscow.
Stone spent a significant portion of his speech railing against Mueller's inquiry. "The entire Russiagate investigation, the totally unproven charges of Russian collusion, are a smokescreen," he claimed. Mimicking LaRouche's Anglophobia, he asserted that "the role of British intelligence in all of this cannot be underestimated."
Stone's warm tone that day belied a more tangled history with LaRouche's organization. In the 1980s, LaRouche went after Stone's friend and mentor Roy Cohn, a powerful New York attorney and political fixer who represented a neighborhood paper investigating the LaRouche organization. According to Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, journalist Dennis King's definitive account of the organization, Cohn's vengeful ex-lover, with guidance from LaRouche's camp, reached out to Stone and other Cohn associates seeking compromising information. When Cohn's ex was later charged with harassment as part of the scheme, Stone wrote to the judge requesting a harsh sentence.
The LaRouche organization until recently had a similarly antagonistic relationship with Trump, regarding him as a symbol of the corrupt financial establishment and disdaining him for his own close relationship with Cohn. "Don't be a chump for Trump," went a piano-backed political ditty released by LaRouche's organization in February 2016. "He's a festering pustule on Satan's rump!"
The group's historic use of extreme—and immature—rhetoric and its ever-shifting ideologies and priorities have for decades fed a healthy debate over how seriously to take LaRouche. ("A Menace or Just a Crank?" read a 1989 New York Times review of King's book.) But the organization's longevity has made it impossible to entirely dismiss. LaRouche initially culled supporters in the late 1960s from leftist student radicals at Columbia University who were drawn to his theories and Marxist orientation. As LaRouche's fascist views became apparent, his paranoia and controlling behavior drove the organization into cult territory. A 1974 New York Times investigation detailed bizarre and disturbing brainwashing episodes—one follower was held hostage in her apartment, another endured so-called deprogramming to the point of weeping and vomiting.
"LaRouche's connections with Russia go back to the '70s and '80s."
Despite such troubling revelations, LaRouche's followers expanded his network across the globe, cultivating relationships to reach influential figures. Those efforts landed some startling successes. LaRouche met with Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1981 and Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo in 1982. His group ran scores of candidates for public office in Europe and Australia. In the United States, something of a high watermark came in 1986 when LaRouche followers won Illinois Democratic primaries for secretary of state and lieutenant governor. LaRouche himself undertook eight no-hope presidential runs between 1976 and 2004.
LaRouche parlayed his global network into a private intelligence agency that sometimes brought in revenue from corporations and other clients and even earned it entrée to the national security community. LaRouche's intelligence operatives enjoyed a cozy relationship with members of the Reagan administration. In a 1985 Washington Post story, Norman Bailey, a Reagan National Security Council staffer, recounted meeting with LaRouche organization members numerous times—and with LaRouche himself three times. Bailey described LaRouche's group as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."
Some of the intelligence was so sensitive that some US officials, including senior leadership at the Defense Intelligence Agency, suspected it came from the Soviets or another government, according to the Post. "LaRouche's connections with Russia go back to the '70s and '80s," says British journalist Matthew Sweet, whose 2018 book, Operation Chaos, chronicled Vietnam deserters who joined LaRouche's group. "There was a time when his organization had excellent relationships with senior Russian intelligence officers," Sweet says, including an official responsible for infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. According to King, LaRouche activists have maintained close contacts with top advisers to Vladimir Putin, "whom LaRouche and his followers have long praised."
"I have a back channel to Trump."
It's unclear what exactly triggered Stone's recent association with LaRouche. (Stone refused a request for comment.) But Houston-based attorney Douglas Caddy claims that Harley Schlanger, a key LaRouche associate, asked for an introduction to Stone in January 2016, knowing the two were acquainted. Caddy, who is best known for briefly representing some of the Watergate burglars, has written that he first met Stone in 1975 when the two were involved in the National Conservative Political Action Committee. When Stone wrote his book alleging LBJ was behind the Kennedy assassination, he thanked Caddy, an active participant in online conspiracy forums, for providing him documents. Caddy has his own links to the LaRouche network: In 2014 he appeared on a radio show hosted by Schlanger, and also signed a public petition organized by a LaRouche group.
Caddy maintains that the alleged Stone-Schlanger connection ought to be of interest to Mueller and other investigators probing Russia's role in the 2016 election. In his recently published memoir—in which Caddy suggests JFK may have been killed to prevent him from revealing proof of extraterrestrial life—he details his interactions with Stone and Schlanger and reprints what he says is an email he received from Stone in early 2016: "Thanks for connecting me with Harley Schlanger—he is a great guy and shares our goals. I think we hit it off. I have a back channel to Trump and we are fighting the globalists."
Caddy declined to answer Mother Jones questions about his introduction of Schlanger and Stone. Schlanger refused to comment on his relationship with Stone. Speaking on behalf of LaRouche's group, Schlanger also declined to comment on Stone's interactions with LaRouche. He accused Mother Jones of supporting "a British/FBI/CIA information warfare operation" against Trump.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... t-mueller/
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Roger Stone has deranged meltdown ahead of his arrest
We still don't know precisely when Special Counsel Robert Mueller will arrest Donald Trump's sidekick Roger Stone, and Roger Stone's sidekick Jerome Corsi. But by all accounts it's coming very soon. In the meantime, these guys are turning on each other in remarkably swift and ugly fashion.
We've all heard Jerome Corsi announce that he's refusing to cut a plea deal on perjury charges, because in his deranged mind, his lies weren't lies. That said, Corsi is claiming that he told the grand jury that he helped Roger Stone come up with a phony story for Stone to tell Congress about Trump-Russia. This alone is enough to incriminate Stone for perjury, even without Corsi cutting a deal. Suffice it to say that Stone is feeling the heat.
Roger Stone posted this on his infamous Instagram account: "So Jerry Corsi was working with Mueller to sandbag me on a fabricated perjury charge. Mueller's minion even promised Corsi no jail time if he would lie and say he gave me John Podesta's stolen e-mails (which he did NOT) Then they were going to say I passed them on to Trump (which I did NOT) . Jerry was willing to LIE about me but not himself ! Now Jerry is lying about legitimate research he did for me regarding the Podesta brothers lucrative business in Russia. Jerry Corsi is starting to make Michael Cohen look like a stand up guy."
This tells us two things. First, based on his more frantic than usual tone, Roger Stone thinks he's going down soon. Second, Stone has convinced himself that it's all Corsi's fault he's going down, simply because Corsi appears to have told some of the truth about Stone, even while lying about the rest. Perhaps Stone should blame his own life of crime for his troubles – but that would be too easy.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/r ... own/15023/
December 9, 2018/185 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel