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How many Trump high ranking senior aides had to know of the Podesta emails in advance before it amounts to collusion? As noted in (Chapter X) Peter Smith seems to have had prior knowledge. In (Chapter Y) we saw that Cambridge Analytica-where Steven Bannon was Alexander Nix’s boss-had prior knowledge.
As we saw in (Chapter Z) it’s a pretty fair conjecture that Smith was Joseph Schmitz’s client-both were scouring the dark web for Clinton’s deleted emails, but Schmitz wasn’t doing it himself, he had a client. Stands to reason then that Smith was Schmitz’s client.
Schmitz himself was no ‘Coffee Boy’-but then in truth neither was Papadopoulos. Seth Abramson has argued persuasively that Trump’s campaign national security team was his equivalent of Nixon’s CREEP. And three of the five original charter members of the NatSec team were: Papadopoulos, Schmitz, and Carter Page.
Then the Russia collusion skeptics say-Wow! What a coincidence. But ‘coincidences’ take a lot of planning.
Indeed, if Smith knew, it’s very plausible that all the senior Trump aides he emailed-Bannon, Michael Flynn, Kellyann Conway, Sean Spicer-knew.
Remember too that Bannon is very close to Eric Prince and Prince and Schmitz were business partners at BlackWater.
Of course, the most infamous case of a Trump operative knowing of Wikileaks plans to leak the Podesta emails in advance appears to be Roger Stone-soon it will be Podesta’s time in the barrel. Stone has tried again and again to give us an alternative explanation but the Occam’s Razor explanation has always been the obvious one-he know about Podesta’s emails. The idea that he thought it would be Podesta’s time in the barrel for a totally unrelated-and really much more trivial reason-would be another heck of a coincidence. That’s what stands out in Watergate 2.0: there are just so many striking coincidences.
Marcy Wheeler recently wrote about Stone’s preposterous explanations of what the August 21, 2016 tweet about Podesta was ‘really about.’
In explaining what he really meant, Stone has enlisted his fellow Far Right co-conspirator, Jeremy Corsi. As noted in (Chapter A) Stone and Corsi also need to be looked at regarding Comyegate. Stone appears to know a lot about who the rogue agents at the FBI who forced Comey’s hand actually were and a lot about how Huma’s emails miraculously showed up on Weiner’s laptop. But in his own explanation-Corsi’s name comes up first to start his narrative.
Indeed, regarding Comeygate, when I first saw the headline that Mueller has evidence Jeremy Corsi is the ‘back channel’ who gave Stone prior knowledge of the coming dump of Podesta’s emails, I had read it to be be a reference to Clinton’s emails to Huma found on Weiner’s server. I had thought to myself that it was pretty amazing that literally a few weeks before I publish this book, Mueller was going to break one of my big scoops-that Stone and Coris are major co-conspirators in not just the Russiagate but the Comeygate side of Watergate 2.0.
Then I realized that the emails in question were not Clinton’s emails with Huma but the Podesta emails. But it’s easy to get this confused. This was where I first read of the story:
Mueller has evidence suggesting Stone associate Jerome Corsi knew Clinton emails would be leaked, per @KenDilanianNBC https://t.co/rpekrB876V
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 25, 2018
Bertrand said ‘Clinton’s emails.’ But when you look at Watergate 2,0, that can refer to any number of emails. In that vein, Marcy Wheeler very helpfully compiled a post that provided a kind of catalogue of the various emails in Watergate 2.0-note I speak of Watergate 2.0 rather than just Russiagate.
THE UNIVERSE OF HACKED AND LEAKED EMAILS FROM 2016: PODESTA EMAILS”
Very helpful as it’s so easy to get all the variously weaponized emails of 2016 mixed up.
It turns out that Mueller hadn’t scooped me on Comeygate but he had something that is an equal bombshell: NBC reported he had evidence that Stone learned in advance of the Podesta emails from Corsi.
In other words his true ‘back channel’ here certainly wasn’t Randy Credico but Coris.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has obtained communications suggesting that a right-wing conspiracy theorist might have had advance knowledge that the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman had been stolen and handed to WikiLeaks, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
Mueller’s team has spent months investigating whether the conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, learned before the public did that WikiLeaks had obtained emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers — and whether he passed information about the stolen emails to Donald Trump associate Roger Stone, multiple sources said.
Mueller’s investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails.
The source and other people familiar with the matter say they have seen no evidence suggesting either man played any role in the hacking or release of the emails. Stone adamantly denies doing anything but passing on information already in the public domain.
Well the fact that Wikileaks had claimed to having incriminating emails on Clinton was in the public domain prior to when it started leaking them on October 7, 2016-just hours after the release of the Hollywood Access video in another amazing coincidence.
But that these were Podesta’s emails most certainly wasn’t known.
So here’s another coincidence-the person who Mueller believes told him about Podesta’s emails is also the person Stone had enlisted to help him explain what he really meant when he tweeted soon it will be Podesta’s time in the barrel.
Stone appears to be in Mueller’s investigative crosshairs, as the special counsel seeks to determine whether the longtime political trickster participated in the secret Russian operation to help Trump win the 2016 election. Mueller has summoned Corsi and nearly a dozen other of Stone’s associates to testify before his Washington, D.C. grand jury, people familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
Indeed, prior to the NBC scoop that Mueller had evidence Stone learned of the Podesta emails from Corsi, it had been clear that Mueller was zeroing in on Roger Stone and Wikileaks and all the various conflicting accounts of communications between them.
Indeed, Stone himself has been admitting since April of this year that he’s quite possibly going to be convicted.
Of course, that in itself can be read in a court room as consciousness of guilt-indeed, Stone’s case is now reportedly in a Grand Jury court room.
Regarding Stone’s shifting accounts as what he really meant by the time in the barrel tweet and just what was the nature of his communications with Assange, Marcy Wheeler points out something else pretty key: for a long time Stone has insisted that Wikileaks has no connection to Russia-how he knows this for a fact is anyone’s guess. But there was an earlier time when he allowed that there could be a Russian connection.
By the time the report came out, we know that Stone was already interested in what WikiLeaks might have, as Charles Ortel BCCed him on an email suggesting that WikiLeaks had Clinton Foundation emails to dump in September in late July.
Then, precisely as the Russian attack on Podesta was rolling out, Stone flip-flopped on his claimed belief about who hacked Hillary Clinton. Between August 1 and August 5, on the same days he was claiming to have dined with Julian Assange when he was instead in Southern California meeting his dark money associates, he started claiming that Guccifer 2.0 was just a hacktivist, not Russians. That stated belief has always been central to his claims not to have conspired with Russia.
In significant part because he flip-flopped publicly, he and Guccifer 2.0 started communicating, first about Stone’s claim that Guccifer 2.0 had nothing to do with Russia, then about Guccifer 2.0 being shut down on Twitter.”
But in July, 2016 Stone had said that the Russians were most likely behind Wikileaks and they were doing it to help Trump.
Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone said several times in July 2016 that Russia was most likely the source for hacked emails released during the Democratic National Convention and that it was not far-fetched to say the purpose was to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a CNN KFile review of Stone’s interviews and appearances.
Amazing right? I mean this has been my point of view and many in the #Resistance over the last 27 months. No doubt, it’s a view that Mueller is taking very seriously. And at one time it was Stone’s own stated view.
The comments, made by Stone from late July through August 1, 2016, show Stone stated at the time that Russia was the source of the emails — a sharp contrast to his more recent posture that Russia was not the source for hacked documents released by WikiLeaks throughout the campaign.
By August 4, 2016, the same day Stone claimed in an email to have dined with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the night prior, Stone abruptly changed his tune. In a conference call along with an interview with radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Stone said that Russia had nothing to do with the hacked emails and they were the sole work of hacker Guccifer 2.0.”
Note that was right around the time the heat around the idea that connections between Trump and the Russians first started to publicly foment. In late July, Trump himself had that infamous last press conference of the campaign where he declared Russia if you’re listening! (Chapter C).
In yet another amazing coincidence the same day Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton’s emails: the Russians started hacking her emails.
Indeed, in yet another amazing coincidence the same day Trump asked Russia to start hacking her emails and the Russians obliged by starting to hack her emails Stone was on Alex Jones and saying that Russia might be behind it because they don’t want a nuclear war.
Back to CNN:
“The reason that the Russians are probably leaking this information is because they don’t want a nuclear war either. (Hillary Clinton) is bent on a war that benefits her donors and the multinational corporations and the defense contractors,” Stone told Jones on a July 27, 2016, edition of Jones’ program.
Several days later, on July 31, 2016, Stone said again the Russians were the most likely source for the material.
“The fact that the Russians will — or whoever — are going to continue to drop bombs on the American people in the form of their own documents. Alex, these are like the Watergate tapes. The Clintons have cut their own throat because they assume that no one would ever see all of their secret illegal maneuverings,” Stone told Jones. “This is why they used the unsecured server to hide the very things that I suspect someone — most likely the Russians — is going to drop on the American people like truthbombs throughout this election. She can raise a billion dollars and it may not matter. Trump may beat her like a drum as he pounces on and helps further public knowledge of every one of the bombshells that is coming.”
On August 1, 2016, speaking on a local radio show in New York, Stone said in an exchange with host Frank Morano that it was not far-fetched to think the Russians were trying to help Trump with the email releases.
“I am listening to the Democrats instead of addressing what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders. They’re saying, ‘Oh, well, this is just Vladimir Putin and the Russians trying to throw the election towards Donald Trump.’ That seems a pretty far-fetched theory from what I can see, Roger,” Morano said to Stone.
“Well, well, but, but, Frank, maybe not,” Stone responded. “Maybe the Russians are acting in their own best interests in this sense. It is the policies of Clinton and Obama that have brought us right now to the brink of nuclear war in the coldest relationship we’ve had with the Russians in decades. Trump would like to, I think, enter a period of détente in which we use hardheaded negotiations to get a peace agreement with the Soviets so that we could work together to pursue and destroy ISIS, which frankly they’re doing a better job of at this point than we are.”
Then three days later, Stone suddenly did a 180-now the idea that Russia was behind the hacks and leaks was just the Clinton’s creating a false conspiracy. Basically his view became that of Morano from 3 days earlier.
Three days later, Stone unequivocally said the Russians had nothing to do with the releases of the hacked emails. The comments came on the same day he sent an email claiming to have had dinner with Assange. Stone now says he never had dinner with Assange and his reference was a recurring joke.
“We know there are gonna be many, many turns in the road, including the material that I assume Julian Assange or WikiLeaks, his organization, drops on the American people,” Stone said on August 4, 2016, in an “Ask Roger” session, a biweekly conference call for paid subscribers he hosted during the presidential campaign.
“The last time this happened Clinton tried to neutralize it by saying, ‘Oh, this is being done by the Russians.’ We now know that the Russians had nothing to do with these emails, none whatsoever,” Stone added, according to a recording of the call CNN obtained from the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters.
We now know this. So what did Stone allegedly ‘learn’ in 3 days where he went from saying that the Russians very well could be behind the hacks to no way could they be?
Perhaps his marching orders-from the Russians-changed? It seems likely that someone told him to knock it off. Who was it? Trump himself?
On so many things Stone has contradicted his earlier story, has changed his story. Many of his lies are simply absurd-like when he ‘explained’ that his email to Randy Credico prepare to die, cocksucker! was really just him expressing sympathy for Credico’s sick cocker spaniel. As it happens, Credico really does have a cocker spaniel and he brought it with him when he testified before Mueller at the Grand Jury.
Credico states that Stone actually threatened the dog itself.
As for the Russians, for 20 months Stone had claimed not have met with any Russians. Then he had to do a Jeff Sessions-ok, I met with some Russians but it was a trivial meeting easy to forget.
One day in late May 2016, Roger Stone — the political dark sorcerer and longtime confidant of Donald Trump — slipped into his Jaguar and headed out to meet a man with a “Make America Great Again” hat and a viscous Russian accent.
The man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, according to Stone, who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said.
“You don’t understand Donald Trump,” Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Fla. “He doesn’t pay for anything.”
Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who’d arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner.
“How crazy is the Russian?” Caputo wrote, according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted “big” money, Stone replied, “waste of time.”
Maybe folks like Stone and Sessions who have such bad memories shouldn’t make categorical statements?
Note that Stone had released this story himself-ie, he knew he was about to be proven a liar again and wanted to get ahead of it. So this description is his own meant to seem exculpatory.
But again, just like with Donald Jr’s Trump Tower Russia meeting in June of that year, the Trump campaign operative in question meeting with the Russians didn’t rule out collusion in principle just that either the dirt wasn’t really useful or that in Stone’s case the price wasn’t right.
Of course, what the Russians really wanted from Trump wasn’t money but sanction relief and changes in US foreign policy towards Russia.
Speaking of which Putin just recently declared the era of U.S domination is over.
In other recent news, it was revealed that the Chinese regularly listen in on Trump’s phone calls as we saw in (Chapter D). Yes. Trump ran on careful handling of classified information.
The Russians, reportedly don’t even bother with this as much as the Chinese. After all, they point out, Putin has very good relations with ‘President Trump.