Roger Stone communicated with WikiLeaks about hacked Democratic emails, says Mueller investigation
- Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team found communications about hacked Democratic Party emails between Trump advisor Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, according to Friday court filings.
- The evidence was gathered during a separate probe of Russian intelligence officers, who were charged with hacking this summer.
- In a statement to Reuters, Stone said the evidence was "innocuous Twitter direct messages" that were previously disclosed to the House Intelligence Committee and "prove absolutely nothing."
- Mueller, however, did not say at the time that he had evidence of communications with WikiLeaks.
Longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone communicated with WikiLeaks about hacked Democratic Party emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a Friday court filing from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.
Mueller's office gathered that evidence in a separate probe of Russian intelligence officers who were charged with hacking emails during the campaign and releasing them. Stone was allegedly communicating with a Russian hacker called Guccifer 2.0 and with WikiLeaks, according to Friday's filing.
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In an email to Reuters, Stone said the evidence was "innocuous Twitter direct messages" that were previously disclosed to the House Intelligence Committee and "prove absolutely nothing." Last month, Stone was indicted for lying to Congress about his communications with others about the hacked emails.
At the time, Mueller did not disclose he had evidence of communications with WikiLeaks, though it is unclear if the evidence cited in Friday's court filing is more substantial than what was previously known.
Stone has admitted to communicating with both WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker group, but has said that he did not know in advance about the hacked emails' release. Stone reportedly advocated for a preemptive presidential pardon for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has not been charged with any federal crimes.
In November 2017, Stone told Business Insider that while he had exchanged private messages with Guccifer 2.0 in 2016, calling the hacker "the real deal" at the time, he had "revised" his assessment of the self-described hacker "some time ago."
"I neither believe he is a Russian Asset or that he hacked the DNC," Stone said in an email.
In October, NBC News reported that Mueller had evidence suggesting that Jerome Corsi, a far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist, may have known in advance that emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign had been hacked and handed over to WikiLeaks.
According to NBC News, Mueller's team investigated whether Corsi knew in advance that WikiLeaks had obtained the hacked emails and whether he then passed that information to Stone, a longtime GOP strategist and informal adviser to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
Corsi was one of nearly a dozen of Stone's associates who were called to testify before a grand jury as part of the ongoing Russia investigation. Stone said he has communicated indirectly with Assange in the past through the radio host Randy Credico, who testified before a grand jury in September.
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