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The number of times during the 2016 campaign Stone claimed to have communicated with Assange-either directly or via an intermediary; sometimes he claimed the former sometimes he claimed the latter-keeps multiplying.
Now we have an email he sent to his protege-who he’s not too happy with now-Sam Nunberg-in August, 2016 stating that he’d ‘dined with Assange last night.’
“In an email dated Aug. 4, 2016, Mr. Stone wrote: “I dined with Julian Assange last night,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Stone is a longtime informal adviser to President Donald Trump who at that point had no official campaign role.”
No official role. Remember though that Don Segretti had no official role for Richard Nixon in 1972 either and he still went to jail for conspiracy to rig an election.
The note, to former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg, adds to a growing number of times Mr. Stone claimed during the campaign to be in contact with WikiLeaks. The next day, Mr. Stone publicly praised Mr. Assange via Twitter .
In an interview, Mr. Stone said the email to Mr. Nunberg was a joke and that he never communicated with Mr. Assange in 2016.
“I never dined with Assange,” he said. The email “doesn’t have any significance because I provably didn’t go…there was no such meeting. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. This was said in jest.”
Mr. Stone said he was flying out of Los Angeles the night before the email, putting him thousands of miles away from Ecuador’s embassy in London, where Mr. Assange has been holed up since 2012 under asylum. Mr. Stone provided the Journal with screenshots showing a booking for a person named “Roger” on a Delta Air Lines flight departing Los Angeles for Miami on Aug. 3, 2016, at 9:30 p.m. The airline confirmed a flight matching Mr. Stone’s screenshot but declined to say whether Mr. Stone was on board, citing customer privacy rules.
It is true it might seem hard for him to join Assange who’s hold up in the Ecuador embassy. On the other hand, Sean Hannity has visited him there as has, Nigel Farage. And we have the striking history of how many times during the campaign and in different contexts and venues Stone claimed to have communicated with Assange.
In any case, it’s becoming clear that Roger Stone’s communications with Assange-such as they were-are a major dimension of the Mueller investigation. If he he isn’t guilty, no one has ever worked harder than Roger Stone to make it look as if he is.
“The email underscores the complexities facing special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as prosecutors seek to unravel the contacts—both claimed and actual—between people in Mr. Trump’s orbit and the Russian government or those with alleged ties to Moscow, which U.S. officials say intervened during the 2016 election in an effort to harm Mrs. Clinton and boost Mr. Trump.
“Mr. Mueller’s team has asked about Mr. Stone’s email during testimony before a grand jury, according to the person familiar with the matter.”
“Mr. Stone has been inconsistent in his statements about WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange. During the 2016 campaign, he indicated that he was in direct contact with Mr. Assange. He has also said he communicated with him, but through an intermediary. In a text message with the Journal Friday, he said he never communicated with Mr. Assange.”
“So he’s now claiming not to have communicated with him at all? He should have led off with that. Now it’s a little late for it to have any credibility.”
What I’d be interested to see-and what Mueller no doubt has-is the context of the email. Nunberg for his part didn’t think Stone was joking.
Mr. Stone’s email to Mr. Nunberg came in the midst of a chain of messages about a poll that showed Mr. Trump losing to Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election. It adds to the list of potential contacts between Mr. Stone and groups alleged by U.S. intelligence to serve as Russian proxies.”
Stone certainly told this ‘joke’ a lot during 2016 and it’s gotten him into a lot of hot water.
UPDATE: Post the public airing of Stone’s email correspondence with Jerome Corsi we have a much better context for this email to Nunberg. While he tries as usual to hand wave it away as a ‘joke’ his emails with Corsi show that he had asked Corsi to get the emails from Assange and that on August 2, 2016, Corsi gave him information not only on the subject-Podesta-but the time period-October.
Even Stone in the future didn’t deny speaking to Assange via an intermediary-but he got indicted for perjury before Congress for testifying about the wrong intermediary-Randy Credico while Jerome Corsi told him about Podesta’s emails.
Based on what we now know via Mueller’s indictment of Stone, the Mueller Report, etc. it doesn’t appear that Stone met with Assange directly-rather that he got the information on the Podesta emails through Corsi-same difference. We also know thanks to Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony and what he told Mueller that Stone also knew about the DNC email leaks-and he told Trump-prior to.
The one seemingly contradictory piece is that Washington Post piece-see Chapter A-that states Stone actually told two associates-one of them was Sam Nunberg-that Wikileaks had Podesta’s emails in April of 2016-when it certainly appears Stone learned the emails were about Podesta and would be released around October from Corsi on August 2, 2016.