587

Of course, Roger Stone seemed to know about the coming leaks of Podesta’s emails two months in advance-soon it will be Podesta’s turn in the barrel. 

He has insisted-not that plausibly-that he was actually referring to John Podesta’s brother Tony who had his own exposure as he was also in Manafort’s partnership. Stone, therefore, wants us to believe that he correctly guessed that Podesta’s time in the barrel was coming but for a totally unrelated,  wrong reason.

Maybe Nate Silver-who’s big on the probabilities of various events-can explain how probable for Stone to get that lucky.

In any case, it certainly appears Stone’s own time in the barrel is coming as he himself has conceded he may well be going to prison-of course, he claims to be ‘framed.’

Even if that were so, it’d be kind of poetic justice as he should have gone to prison for his role in hand delivering the Canucks letter from Don Segretti-while the youngest member of CREEP at 19 in 1972. His extreme youth at the time saved him. This time he’s not so young.

Mueller is very interested in Roger Stone’s communications with Wikileaks and Guccifer 2,0, indeed the communications of conservative activists in general with Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 during the 2016 election. 

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is scrutinizing how a collection of activists and pundits intersected with WikiLeaks, the website that U.S. officials say was the primary conduit for publishing materials stolen by Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.”

It’s a not so well kept secret that there were probably dozens of conservative activists reaching out to Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 during the election. Marco Rubio did warn his fellow Republicans about using stolen information hacked and disseminated by Wikileaks and the Russians but very few listened. This is the modern Republican party which is, of course, morally and intellectually bankrupt so no wonder they didn’t take heed to Rubio. With the modern GOP it’s basically a law of physics that voices of reason are ignored.

FN: Of course these days Rubio is as shameless a Trump hack as you will find. 

Here is Maggie Haberman, again:

“During the campaign, Guccifer 2.0 used social media to invite individual reporters and Republican operatives to request specific caches of documents.”

“Not long after, reports began circulating that Russia was behind the hacks, and that the materials were being spread as part of a campaign to undercut the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton. Still, that did not stop journalists and Republican operatives from dealing with Guccifer 2.0, and Mr. Stone was hardly alone in having contact with the hackers.”

By the way, as we argue in another (chapter S) this doesn’t speak well for the media either. They proved last year when they largely left Wikileaks huge leak of CIA emails and documents that they can show restraint if they want to, But when the damaging information is about Hillary Clinton, then suddenly normal process doesn’t matter-just as it didn’t for Comey’s ‘extreme transparency.’

As for the GOP operatives, they may well themselves have been engaging in collusion conspiracy with Russia.

Peter Smith’s Ahab like search for Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails has been dismissed in the same way that others-Carter Page and Papadopoulos-but even Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen have all been dismissed-as yet another ‘coffee boy’ etc. Smith was presumed to be just some marginal figure doing something on a totally ad hoc basis. Just like Trump advised the Saudis and SA’s Putin-MBS-to blame the violent murder of a Washington Post journalist living in America on ‘rogue officers’, so all Trump operatives caught engaging in collusion like activities are dismissed as someone marginal who was just a ‘volunteer’ and that Trump couldn’t pick out of a lineup Of course, that’s what he said about Felix Sater too, and that might have been a mistake as Sater now seems to be on a mission to take him down.

UPDATE: Sater is now set to testify publicly before Schiff and the House Intel Committee next week on March 14.

But it’s clear that Smith was close to some top Trump campaign insiders-particularly Michael Flynn who actually visited with him before Flynn went on his Moscow trip in late 2015 to eat dinner with Putin-Jill Stein was also there.

As we saw in (Chapter J) he may have been the client Joseph Schmitz was referring to when Schmitz visited the FBI in July, 2016 with emails from the dark web he thought might be Clinton’s deleted emails.

Regarding the WSJ piece,  some have argued that there was nothing really new in it-which might presage Stone’s in trouble. Stone is surely in trouble regardless of how you read this piece. But what is new ground is that Smith may have had prior knowledge of Podesta’s emails-just like Roger Stone.

“Investigators also have evidence that the late GOP activist Peter W. Smith may have had advance knowledge of details about the release of emails from a top Hillary Clinton campaign official by WikiLeaks, one person familiar with the matter said. They have questioned Mr. Smith’s associates, the person said.”

“Right-wing pundit Jerome Corsi was also questioned by investigators about his interactions with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks before a grand jury in September, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Corsi declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Stone said he hasn’t been contacted by the special counsel. Mr. Smith died last year.”

So Corsi is a common link for both Smith and Stone.

“The person familiar with Mr. Smith recalled him repeatedly implying that he knew ahead of time about leaks of Mr. Podesta’s emails. The Journal previously reported that in the fall of 2016, Mr. Smith told friends and wrote in an email that he directed hackers to give emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private server to WikiLeaks. It is unclear whether hackers ever obtained the emails belonging to Mrs. Clinton, which she had said were deleted because they were deemed personal. Those emails have never been made public.”

I love Wikileaks! Remember that? Well one of the questions Mueller wants Trump to answer is regarding what he knows about communications between Roger Stone and Wikileaks.

UPDATE: Apparently on his written take home exam, Trump told Mueller he never spoke to Roger Stone about the emails. There has been recent reporting that suggests Stone did speak to Stone-there are emails between senior Trump staff and Stone in both July and October of 2016. In Cohen’s barn burning testimony last week he testified that he witnessed Roger Stone telling Trump about the DNC leaks in advance. That would be perjury-which is what the GOP impeached Clinton over.

That Trump did in fact perjure himself was confirmed-reconfirmed?-in Roger Stone’s recent trial where he was found guilty on all 5 counts.

For this reason the House Democrats are now investigating if Trump lied to Mueller. 

FN: Most Americans believe Cohen not ‘President Trump.’

More from Quinnipiac:

Trump should release tax returns: 64-29

If he doesn't, Congress should pursue them: 57-38

Mueller running fair investigation: 54-27

Hush money payments unethical: 73-20

But public is not ready for impeachment, 59-35

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) March 5, 2019

FN: Compare that to polls now that show a plurality-some show a majority-think Trump should not just be impeached but convicted and removed.

The scrutiny of activities related to WikiLeaks suggests investigators believe the organization’s importance to the Russia probe may extend beyond its dealings with Guccifer 2.0. A list of questions Mr. Mueller wanted Mr. Trump to answer and gave to the president’s legal team earlier this year included one about the president’s knowledge of communication between Mr. Stone, his associates and WikiLeaks, The Wall Street Journal has reported.”

This on top of the fact that it was reported a few months ago that Cambridge Analytica also had advanced knowledge of the coming leak of Podesta’s emails as we saw in (Chapter Y)

“Then there’s Cambridge Analytica. The (now shuttered) British company did the Trump campaign’s data. Its speciality was ‘microtargeting’: individual messages tailored to individual voters, delivered by email, Facebook and Twitter. The US intelligence agencies believe that Russian internet ‘troll factories’ were also pushing out pro-Trump propaganda on social media: sometimes fake news, sometimes real news, such as the hacked contents of Clinton’s emails. The question is whether this was done in coordination with the Trump campaign. An American lawyer I know told me that he was approached by a Cambridge Analytica employee after the election. They had had the Clinton campaign emails more than a month before they were published by WikiLeaks: ‘What should I do?’ Take this to Mueller, the lawyer replied.”

So Roger Stone, Peter Smith, and Cambridge Anaytica-run by Bannon and the Mercers may well have had prior knowledge of the Podesta emails.

Arguing that if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, it’s just a coinkydink is getting more and more tendentious.

UPDATE 2.0: Actually subsequent information suggests that Smith might have done more than simply have prior knowledge of the Podesta emails-he could actually have paid the hackers behind them.

If so this would implicate the Trump campaign not just on the demand side-Roger Stone, Corsi, the Mercers, Donald Jr-if that’s what you say I love it!’, Papadopoulos but on the supply side.

One of the 81 Trump associates looped into the House Judiciary Dems 81 investigations is none other than the Estate of Peter Smith.