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After all, just a few weeks ago, Sam Nunberg went on a media blitz and proclaimed he was willing effectively to go to jail to protect his mentor, Roger Stone, by refusing to comply with a Mueller subpoena. It emerged pretty quickly that Nunberg is sort of an erratic guy who changes his story a lot.
He ended up complying after all and in retrospect claimed he always meant to comply and that it was all a performance-he exulted, one very much like Roger Stone himself would give.
Roger Stone, however, is hardly grateful and it’s not hard to see why: Nunberg has revealed that Stone was bragging about speaking to Assange as early as April 2016 and had learned that Wikileaks had damaging emails on Hillary Clinton. If this is true this is a major break in the case-and you wonder if these are the same emails George Papadopoulos’ Russian professor told HIM about late that same month.
Roger Stone is declaring his protege is a ‘psycho’ and ‘cocaine addict.’
Two former aides to Donald Trump waged a war of words against each other this week, using cable news and social media as their battlefields.
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump’s, took to his personal Instagram page on Thursday to call fellow ex-aide Sam Nunberg, a man who once viewed Stone as a mentor, a “psycho” and a “lying asshole.”
“That post came in response to an appearance by Nunberg on MSNBC yesterday in which he said that Stone was trying to curry favor with Trump by suggesting he had met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prior to the 2016 presidential election.“He’s always trying to ingratiate himself to Trump. I don’t care about Trump. It’s irrelevant to me if I have a relationship with him again. Roger does. They have a long relationship,” Nunberg said in the clip.
This brings us to the classic axiom of logic: something cannot be both ‘A and not-A’ at the same time
Earlier this month, Nunberg made a number of headlines during a cable news blitz in which he initially bragged he would not cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. He would later testify before a grand jury.
In a phone conversation with The Daily Beast, Nunberg said he understood Stone would be annoyed.
“I understand why Roger is upset,” Nunberg said. “I shouldn’t have used the word lie, he’s not a liar. In any case, I do not believe he met with Assange.”
Stone is a subject in the special counsel’s investigation and has maintained that his claim about meeting Assange was “a joke.”
This is sort of like the Mundell Trilemma all three can’t be true at the same time:
1. Stone didn’t lie.
2. He didn’t meet Assange
3. He did tell Nunberg he did.
At least one of the three can’t be true at the same time. Either Stone is a liar, Nunberg himself is, or Stone did meet Assange. In a way, Nunberg has been giving Stone the benefit of the doubt by insisting that while Stone claimed to have communicated with Assange-wether directly or through an intermediary-he didn’t really, he’s just being Roger and Roger sometimes lies.
But in the same breath he’s now saying Stone didn’t lie. But how can Stone both be a liar and NOT have met with Assange? As he claimed many times that he did.
Indeed, it’s tough to keep up with Stone’s ever shifting version of events regarding meeting with Assange-via an intermediary-in 2016.
In that vein, Phillip Bump has a helpful timeline of Stone’s with both Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0-believed to be a front for Russian intelligence.
The entire timeline is very helpful for trying to get a handle on Roger Stone and his shifting narrative-as his assertions keep changing; he has claimed that he never spoke directly, just via a back channel, but other times he has claimed he spoke directly to him.
Spring 2016. Stone tells a confidant that he had spoken with Assange and learned about emails WikiLeaks possessed that would be problematic for Democrats, including Podesta.”
This is fascinating in that it came at roughly the same time Papadopoulos was told the Russians had thousands of emails damaging to Clinton. In addition, if this source is correct, it would mean that Stone already knew about the Podesta emails in April-he first tweeted about ‘Podesta’s time in the barrel’ on August 21 of the campaign-two days after Manafort was fired.
UPDATE: It’s also contradicts the timeline we have since drawn thanks to the emails and texts between Stone and Corsi where Stone only learned of the Podesta emails from Corsi about Podesta’s emails on August 2, 2016. Has the identify of this Stone friend every come to light? Sounds like yet another question for Mueller….
End of UPDATE.
June 12, 2016. In an interview with ITV, Assange says the organization has more emails from Clinton.”
I also find it notable that Assange revealed he already had the emails in early June of 2016. Sam Nunberg has been on Ari Melber a lot lately, as has Randy Credico-a few nights ago, Melber had them both on. While Nunberg admits that Stone claimed to him multiple times to have spoken with Assange, he insists on assuming Stone is lying.
As noted above, he’s giving Stone the benefit of the doubt by assuming he’s lying.
Randy Credico, on the other hand, is giving Assange the benefit of the doubt by assuming he’s telling the truth-admittedly that’s the more usual way you give a friend the benefit of the doubt. On Melber, he insisted that Stone never communicated to Assange wether directly or via an intermediary.
Ok-but how does he know? Where comes his certainty? It can only be that this is what Assange told him. Then Credico for his part communicates regularly with both Assange and Stone. Regarding Stone he says they email about once per week.
But in claiming that Assange never communicated with Stone, Credico is implicitly calling Stone a liar. A liar who through his lies have gotten both Credico himself and Assange a lot of unneeded grief-Credico has been forced to appear before Congress. Yet he’s still buddies with him? That’s a little counterintuitive.
UPDATE: While it’s settled-Corsi was the intermediary regarding the Podesta emails-Credico clearly’s involvement remains ambiguous certainly acted in his communications with Stone like he knew something-‘Clinton is done’ and it turns out he was best friends with Assange’s lawyer.
Find link Mike.
Some have argued that because Wikileaks told Stone to stop saying he spoke to Assange in DM messages this shows he didn’t talk to him. But that’s far from clear. They may just have wanted deniability. And then there’s the message they went Stone after the election:
Nov. 8, 2016. Trump wins the presidency.
Nov. 9, 2016. WikiLeaks again messages Stone over Twitter.
“Happy?” the group wrote, referring to the election results. “We are now more free to communicate.”
UPDATE: Now we know that #TeamTreasonTrump considered reaching out to Assange after he helped them win.