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This was something of a buried lede in yesterday’s Washington Post scoop on Mueller asking Bannon questions regarding what Stone discussed about the emails with the Trump campaign. In fairness these days there are often multiple ledes and it’s not always so easy to figure out what the lede of a story is.

“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.

We looked at the Bannon side of this story in more detail in (Chapter X).

UPDATE: We’ve since seen the emails that make Stone a liar for the 87000th time over the last four years-well done! 

End of UPDATE

“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.”

This is notable in that it’s totally new information-Stone never copped to this before. It resembles pretty closely Stone’s sudden about-face in April, 2018 as to wether he’d met with any Russians during the campaign as we saw in (Chapter A). For months 20 months he’d insisted he’d had no such contacts. Suddenly he admits to having had a contact.  What changed? Mueller confronted him with facts and Stone was desperate to get ahead of the story.

UPDATE: If you believe Stone only discussed Wikileaks after Manafort left the campaign-why’d he wait because he worried speaking to him about it during the campaign would be wrong?! Has Stone ever not done something because it’s wrong?-we have some Trump diplomas for you.

It seems pretty clear there is a similar dynamic here:

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.”

In other words, Manafort is spilling on his relationship with Stone and this is going to come out anyway, so Stone is trying to get ahead of it in the media.

Of course, when Stone is forced to back off of one lie, he tells a new one. After finally admitting he did meet with a Russian national-about what else? Clinton dirt-he tried to claim it wasn’t of interest because the Russian national wanted money. Ok, but it shows his interest in receiving oppo from the Russians if nothing else. Intent is a big part of this whole investigation into ‘collusion’-really coordination-and just like Donald Jr at the Trump Tower meeting of June, 2016, Stone’s intent to collude is clear.

His claim to have spoken to Manafort about Wikileaks but only after Manafort left the campaign-as if the distinction actually mattered to him-also resembles Manafort’s own previous attempts to minimize his conversations with Konstantin Kilimnik who Mueller convicted of collusion in June of this year who has ties to Russian military intelligence-and who was Manafort’s partner in crime pushing pro Russian politicians in the Ukraine for years.

While he had-prior to his cooperation deal with Mueller-admitted to discussing politics including the hacked DNC emails with Kilimnik in early August, 2016 he’d attempted to minimize it by claiming that it was somehow not in his role as the Trump campaign manager-as he was at the time-but just as a private individual. He also claimed rather fantastically that it was an ‘informal, casual’ discussion of politics.

Discussions of the DNC leaks while you’re the Trump campaign manager are by definition not casual. 

But no doubt, Manafort is much more candid these days in his conversations with Mueller which have been very extensive.

Which, is why Stone is now forced to once again correct his own factually wrong record.

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.

In other words you hyped yourself into being a target of the investigation into Russia collusion by falsely bragging again and again about-colluding with Russia in service of the Trump campaign. If so, Stone is way too good a ‘hyper’ for his own good as is his boss Russia, if you’re listening. 

Indeed, as noted in (Chapter B) there was a time when Stone admitted that the source for Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks very well could be the Russians but then he did a very sudden about-face on August 4, 2016. Did some one warn him to stop admitting it could be the Russians?

“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, 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.”

Regarding this side of Stone’s-and Jeremy Corsi’s-machinations see Marcy Wheeler for more. 

Again, it’s hard to really upgrade outlets for buried ledes as many of these stories have multiple ledes. This WaPo piece clearly had multiple leads:

1. That Mueller interviewed Bannon again and asked him specifically about Stone’s conversations about Wikileaks with the Trump campaign and we saw in (Chapter C).

2. That Stone now admits to having spoken to Manafort about Wikileaks.

3. And here’s another potential lede:

In spring 2016, before it was public that WikiLeaks had received any hacked Democratic emails, Stone privately told an associate he knew the group had a trove of emails that would embarrass Clinton and torment senior Democrats such as Podesta, The Post reported in March.”

True, this was a previous report. But the question begs when Stone told this associate-Sam Nunberg-about this trove of emails was he already aware of the Podesta emails?

In the above link, Wheeler chronicles that Bannon and Rebekah Mercer was already discussing hitting Clinton on alleged deep Russian ties-based on Clinton Cash-in March of that same year-around about the same time Stone was boasting of his knowledge of the incriminating emails on Clinton.

UPDATE: This Post story remains an enigma as it has Stone learning about the Podesta emails already in April 2016 when the emails between him and Corsi seem to show he learned about them from Corsi on August 2, 2016.

The idea that Stone spoke to Manafort about Wikileaks seems to further corroborate Seth Abramson’s theory that it was Manafort who directed Stone to find out what else Assange had on July 22, 2016-again the loose end is the Post story.