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In (Chapter A) I discussed the almost universally held popular misconception in 2017 that Steve Bannon had no Russia exposure to speak of. What is truly ironic is that even Mueller shared this misperception and that what finally corrected it was Bannon’s own big mouth. In his need to strut, he spilled his guts to Michael Wolff about the Trump Russia House and Russiagate and magically made himself a person of interest for Mueller overnight.
Again, not to brag-and I wouldn’t if someone else would brag on my behalf…-I always felt that Bannon was involved-it just logically made no sense that he wasn’t.
I mean for him not to have been would almost be an insult to the alt Right practitioner. I just found it very hard to imagine in light of the Trump campaign’s obsession with Hillary’s deleted emails that he wasn’t involved in any of these conversations. Another mistake was the literalist assumption that just because Bannon wasn’t technically the campaign manager until August, he wasn’t deeply involved with the campaign previously.
Indeed, speaking of Bannon’s involvement with Russiagate, Marcy Wheeler looks at another side of it that hasn’t gotten much attention-the attempt by Roger Stone his co-conspirator Jeremy Corsi and friends to claim that the real Russia Collusion was Hillary Clinton-based on large part on that piece of oppo trash, Clinton Cash.
Of course, while we can-and should-scoff at and scorn Clinton Cash, the sad and really very outrageous fact is that the FBI started a Clinton Foundation investigation based on it; as we noted in (Chapter B), Andy McCabe’s leaking of the investigation was used as a pretext for Trump and his friends to scapegoat him in yet another attempt to create a false, parallel narrative to Trump-Russia collusion.
In (Chapter C) we noted the fact that Bannon testified under oath that the Trump campaign was inundated with people bringing them what they claimed were Hillary’s deleted emails. And in (Chapter D) we saw that Bannon was one of the Trump senior aides listed in Peter Smith’s recruitment document-others were Sam Clovis, the man who hired both Carter Page and George Papadopoulos-Sean Spicer, and Kellyann Conway.
Recent reporting suggests Smith may have had prior knowledge of Wikileaks’ Podesta emails dump-in subsequent emails he and the Russian hackers appear to be celebrating the dump-the hackers are referred to as ‘students.’
UPDATE: Find quotes Mike-EmptyWheel?
In (Chapter E) we saw that Cambridge Analytica reportedly saw the DNC emails one month in advance.
We know that there were multiple attempts by CA-both through Alexander Nix-who lest we forget, Bannon was actually his boss-and the Mercers. Again, note that in the link above, Wheeler talks about the rather shocking news that Bannon and Rebekah Mercer were already talking about connecting Clinton to Russia-based on claims about the Clinton’s Russia ties made in Clinton Cash.
There are just so many connections to grapple with…
UPDATE: Post Michael Wolff the Mercers split with Bannon of course but during the campaign Bannon and Rebekah Mercer also worked on a Clinton Cash canard that tried to link Clinton to Russia as early as March 2016.
Indeed, regarding Bannon’s involvement with the Trump campaign, remember his close relationship to Erik Prince who Seth Abramson persuasively argues was one of Trump’s two real foreign policy advisers-the other being Michael Flynn. And who was Prince’s partner at Blackwater? Yep, Joseph Schmitz-Abramson persuasively argues Schmitz’s client in searching for Hillary’s emails off the dark web was none other than Peter Smith. Again, if you are skeptical of this you effectively believe the Trump campaign was running two parallel searches on the dark web for her emails.
As we saw in (Chapter E) Schmitz brought what he claimed were Clinton’s deleted emails to the FBI in the Summer of 2016. In that chapter I’d raised the question of wether or not the materials Schmitz gave the FBI actually contained Comey’s notorious fake Russian document that he used as a pretext for his extremely careless press conference on July 5, 2016.
Again, it wasn’t at all plausible in 2017 that Bannon was totally out of the loop on all of this-even though the entire media and even Mueller himself believed this was so. And that was before so much was added to our fact pattern on all things Russia Collusion and Emailgate.
And, yesterday it was reported that Bannon, who testified before Mueller for 20 hours in February, was brought back for a second interview on Friday. And a major point of interest in the questions Bannon received were: about what conversations Stone had with the Trump campaign regarding Wikileaks’ leaked emails.
It’s a very interesting question. Indeed as we saw in (Chapter E) while Seth Abramson has compiled a list of the top Trump senior campaign aides of interest for Mueller in Russiagate, he leaves Stone off the list. I don’t read it as he overlooks Stone so much as sees him as operating on his own rogue, parallel track-ie, Stone would speak directly to Trump.
But again, logically, we see the interest of Smith, Schmitz, the Mercers, Cambridge Analytica, Donald Jr, etc in all things Emailgate and on the other hand there’s Roger Stone with all his many comments about communicating with Assange-as we saw in (Chapter E), Stone actually used to admit there was a real possibility that the Russians gave the DNC emails to Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0, then he changed his point of view over night-on about August 4, 2016.
Is it much of a leap that Stone spoke with the rest of the Emailgate obsessed Trump campaign?
And that is the question Mueller is now asking.
“The special counsel investigation is pressing witnesses about longtime Trump ally Roger 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 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 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 being in contact.”
“On Friday, Mueller’s team questioned Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, about claims Stone is said to have made privately about WikiLeaks before the group released emails that prosecutors say were 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.”
Exactly-if you want one plausible instance of collusion in truth Mueller is investigating not collusion but coordination, October 7 is a very good place to start as the timing quite clearly was about taking the heat off Trump and Hollywood Access.
Stone had predicted previously Wikileak’s email dump was coming on October 5 of that week.
“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.”
To digress just a little the media as noted in (Chapter F) is also complicit as they chose to weaponize the dump. No it’s not that ‘they had no choice’-regarding Wikileaks trove of CIA documents in 2017, they made the right choice-they gave the leaks little oxygen.
Another buried lede in the Washington Post piece: Stone now admits to having spoken to Manafort regarding Wikileaks’ incriminating emails but he adds that this was after Manafort left the campaign. I’m sure if Manafort had remained part of the campaign Stone wouldn’t have spoken with him about it…
“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 that vein Mueller is also probing Roger Stone’s conference calls
UPDATE: In reporting-and then Mueller memos-it turns out that Stone communicated multiple times with Bannon regarding the Podesta emails in September-October of 2016-after the release of the first batch on October 7 Bannon emailed Stone back well done.
Regarding Stone’s conversations with Manafort this further buttresses Seth Abramson’s persuasive conjecture that Manafort was the anonymous senior official who was directed-by Trump himself?-to have Stone find out what else Wikileaks had.
It makes logical sense-when Bannon was leading the campaign-the campaign director-Stone spoke with him about Wikileaks but when it was Manafort Stone spoke to him-who just happened to be his 40 year friend and business partner.
Then in March 2019 Michael Cohen revealed to Congress what he’d revealed to Mueller-he had overheard Stone telling Trump about the coming dump of DNC emails on about July 18 or July 19.
Then, of course, we saw all the emails between Stone and Jerome Corsi-after being directed by the Trump campaign on July 22-very plausibly by Manafort-Stone delegated to Corsi-who apparently delegated to Ted Malloch who got the info from Assange. On August 2 Corsi got back to Stone-the subject of the future Wikileaks dump was Podesta and it would be out around October.
Just to underscore how much planning coincidences take on this same day Manafort was dinning with Konstantin Kilimnik in NYC where he handed him 75 pages of detailed polling data, they discussed sanctions-and Wikileaks’ hacks of the DNC.