On August 8, 2016, Stone says at a Republican conference in Florida, “I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation. . . .”18 On August 12, he says Assange has Clinton’s “missing” emails—the very materials the Trump campaign has been hunting for throughout the summer of 2016.19 On August 21, he claims prior knowledge of the content of WikiLeaks’s next release of stolen documents, tweeting that “it will soon the Podesta’s [sic] time in the barrel”; the fact that WikiLeaks has Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails won’t become public information for another forty-five days.20 In mid-September 2016, he says in a radio interview that he expects “Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that [payload] of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that [Clinton] email server.”21
Amid these comments, Stone boasts of his access to Assange and is secretly in contact with one of the very hackers who is leaking stolen documents to the WikiLeaks founder. On August 14, Stone has a back-channel exchange via Twitter with Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0; the next day, he tells WorldNetDaily that he has communicated with Assange and knows from these communications that information on the Clinton Foundation will soon be released by WikiLeaks.22 The day after that, Stone tells radio host Alex Jones that he has been having “backchannel communications” with WikiLeaks and knows Assange has “political dynamite” regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton.”23 Two days later, he tells C-SPAN he has an intermediary who has been acting as an interlocutor between him and Assange, and three days after that he repeats the claim yet again on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze Radio.24 The intermediary Stone references is now believed to be former comedian and current radio host Randy Credico, who will be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury by Special Counsel Mueller on August 10, 2018.25
Credico, a longtime Stone friend, spends much of the 2016 presidential campaign loudly denouncing Bernie Sanders as insufficiently progressive, until suddenly he declares, on May 10, 2016—once it’s clear that Trump will win the Republican nomination—that he is founding a “Sanders Supporters for Trump” group. It is an about-face that makes no sense, Washington Monthly observes, without the further knowledge that Credico and Stone are both seasoned political operatives “with a history of ratfucking their political opponents”—in this case, Sanders’s primary opponent Hillary Clinton.26 Despite his partnership with Stone during the presidential campaign, Credico will say, in June 2018, that he will honor any subpoena sent to him by Mueller. “I’m not going to go to jail for Roger Stone,” he tells CNN.27
While Stone retreats, in late October 2016, from his prior claims of having special access to Assange, by early March 2017 he is once again claiming a “backchannel to Assange” and asserting that Assange “indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary.”28 When a cache of Stone’s private Twitter messages is published by the Atlantic in February 2018, however, it is revealed that Stone was in fact telling the truth in the beginning: he had direct contact with WikiLeaks before and after the 2016 election.29 Indeed, the day after Trump’s victory in November, WikiLeaks messaged Stone privately on Twitter to say, “Happy? We are now more free to communicate.”30
Throughout all his late-summer and early-fall 2016 statements about WikiLeaks, Stone contends—as Trump is doing the same across three televised presidential debates—that the Russians are not behind the hack of the DNC or the Clinton campaign, calling that claim “a canard.”31
Of all his WikiLeaks tweets, Stone’s October 2016 tweets on the subject of the hacked and stolen Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails are particularly troubling because of their specificity and how they dovetail with Trump’s concurrent campaign rhetoric praising WikiLeaks. On October 1, Stone tweets (from an account since suspended by Twitter), “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”32 On October 12, Stone says he and Assange have a “good mutual friend” with whose assistance he has been conducting a “backchannel communication” with Assange; he adds that “[my] friend travels back and forth from the United States to London and we talk. I had dinner with him last Monday.”33
An August 2017 report by Foreign Policy will reveal that not only did Assange leak documents he received from the Russians, but he also declined to leak information in his possession that he apparently considered damaging to the Kremlin.34
Stone’s foreknowledge of the release of Russia-hacked materials tracks with foreknowledge demonstrated in the last ninety days of the campaign by someone even closer to Trump than Stone: Trump’s son. As the Nation explains,
A series of e-mail exchanges—first reported by The Atlantic and then released, on Twitter, by Don Jr. himself—reveal that Trump Jr. queried WikiLeaks about damaging Clinton material. “What’s behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?” Don Jr. wrote in one exchange. After WikiLeaks e-mailed him asking if he would persuade his father to promote WikiLeaks via the candidate’s own account, just 15 minutes later Trump Sr. tweeted: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”35
This attempt to coordinate with and indeed placate WikiLeaks is rewarded later on in October 2016, when it becomes clear that WikiLeaks will not be releasing information damaging to Trump. Assange’s political intentions will be further underscored when journalists get access to some of his private Twitter messages, which include calling Clinton a “bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath” and writing that “We [WikiLeaks] believe it would be much better for GOP to win [the election].”36 On Russia, Assange will write sympathetically of the Kremlin’s plight in the face of American military might: “Russia is absolutely terrified,” he asserts in a Twitter direct message to a “low-security” internal WikiLeaks discussion group. “Kalingrad, Crimea, and its only foreign naval base, Syria[,] are all under threat and are not protected by Russia’s strategic depth. . . . Consequently the Kremlin is deeply paranoid of everyone. . . .”37 While Assange also levels criticisms of authoritarianism in Moscow, his focus is squarely on keeping Clinton from power, writing to his WikiLeaks discussion group after Super Tuesday of his desire that Clinton suffer a stroke.38
In October 2016, Stone’s old business partner Manafort reemerges. It has never been clear what Manafort spends his time doing, and it is even less so during this period. Hired to organize the Republican National Convention in late March 2016, Manafort had made no effort to do so by June; according to Politico, “by mid-June, less than one month before the convention would be gaveled in, there was no program. No celebrity acts had been booked. No known GOP leaders or elders had asked for a speaking slot. Organizers were concerned enough that they decided to bring in [a new convention planner].”39 Nevertheless, in October Manafort contacts Trump to offer “the GOP nominee pointers on how to handle the Clinton email news and urging him to make a play in Michigan”—the latter being a surprisingly, perhaps suspiciously prescient remark about where Trump must focus his energies if he wants to win the election.40 During the presidential transition, Manafort calls Reince Priebus to counsel the administration on handling the publication of the Steele dossier by BuzzFeed.41 In September 2017, CNN will report that, because Manafort was under an FBI wiretap for part of his time on the Trump campaign and thereafter, the fact that following Trump’s inauguration Manafort continued to “talk to President Donald Trump” could become problematic for the president—as those conversations occurred against a backdrop of FBI intercepts that “sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.”42 In January 2018, NBC News will report that Trump believes the investigation of him can be “crushed” in part because “he has decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn’t going to ‘flip’ and sell him out.”43
Trump’s concern about whether Manafort might flip on hi
m appears to grow after Manafort is convicted of eight felonies by a Virginia jury in August 2018 and Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleads guilty to eight felonies on the same day—with Cohen saying during his in-court allocution that Trump personally directed him to pay hush money to multiple ex-mistresses.44 Shortly after the Manafort and Cohen convictions, Trump will tweet angrily about “flippers”—witnesses who commit crimes, then cooperate with prosecutors in later cases against their co-conspirators—referring to them as individuals for whom “everything’s wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go.” Trump unfavorably compares “flippers” to his “brave” former campaign manager and chairman, Manafort, who, unlike Cohen, “refused to break.”45
As the campaign enters its final stretch, Trump aids Russia’s hackers after the fact by casting doubt on their responsibility for the attacks against America’s political and voting infrastructure—despite his legal responsibility, following his August 17, 2016, security briefing, not to take any action that might assist a Russian cover-up. This legal responsibility is underscored when, in July 2018, the Department of Justice indicts twelve Kremlin-backed hackers and includes in its indictments allegations that the hackers deliberately put out misinformation about who was responsible for their cyber-intrusions—exactly what Trump did, repeatedly, after his security briefing in August 2016.46 Per the indictments, the indicted Russian hackers variously claimed to be American or Romanian “to undermine the allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion.”47 Few credited the hackers’ claims at the time—giving little reason to believe their false claims affected the presidential election. However, many voters and Trump supporters appeared to believe Trump’s persistent claims that Russia had not been involved in hacking U.S. persons and institutions.48 That the claims were made by a GOP presidential nominee who was known to be receiving classified security briefings made them more plausible.
On October 10, in the second presidential debate, Trump picks up on an argument he made in the first presidential debate—that the DNC hacker could have been, rather than a Russian government agent, “somebody sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds”—and expands it substantially, arguing, “Maybe there is no hacking.”49 Ten days later, during the third presidential debate, Trump says—two months removed from having been told with “high confidence” by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia is hacking American citizens and institutions—“[We have] no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.”50 Trump makes this argument even though, in between the first and second debate, the FBI has announced that “Russian hackers were behind cyberattacks on a contractor for Florida’s election system that may have exposed the personal data of Florida voters.”51
Even after the election, Trump’s attempts to vindicate Russia from any responsibility for hacking America’s infrastructure continue unabated. In January 2017, he tweets out a defense of WikiLeaks to his tens of millions of social media followers, saying of WikiLeaks’s founder, “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’. . . . Also said Russians did not give him the info!”52
On October 26, two days before Comey reopens the Clinton case, Giuliani tells Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that Trump has “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days. I’m talking about some pretty big surprise [sic].”53 On October 28, Giuliani goes on the Lars Larson radio program and says that current agents in the FBI have been leaking information to him about the ongoing Clinton investigation—a Hatch Act violation, as federal employees are not permitted to participate in political campaigns or political activity in this way. On November 4, Giuliani tells Fox & Friends that he “heard about” what Director Comey was going to do—reopen the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server—before it happened.54 “This has been boiling up in the FBI,” he says. “I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it.”55
When Giuliani’s comments become a source of controversy, he insists that the “pretty big [October] surprise” he referenced in speaking to MacCallum on October 26 was just a new Trump ad campaign.56 He will hedge somewhat in a subsequent interview with CNN, however, saying that Comey reopening the Clinton case “came as a complete surprise to me, except to the extent that maybe it wasn’t as much of a surprise to me because I had been hearing for quite some time that there was . . . debate and anger within the FBI about the way they [active FBI agents] were being treated by the Justice Department.”57 Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchorman, extensively dissects Giuliani’s Larson interview, however, noting that “the former mayor said he was in contact with former agents ‘and a few active agents, who obviously don’t want to identify themselves.’ ”58 In a later CNN interview, Giuliani will say he hasn’t spoken to an active FBI agent in eight to ten months.59
Giuliani’s insistence that “I did nothing to get it out” and “I had no role in it”—with respect to the story that FBI agents were then (in Giuliani’s words) in a state of “revolution”—is particularly telling, as indeed it is another man who will in the future be a legal adviser to Donald Trump who is responsible for that information getting to the media. That man, well-known Republican attorney Joseph diGenova, was, with Giuliani, one of the most vocal opponents of Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton when Comey announced that final judgment in July 2016.60 DiGenova’s firm—comprising him and his wife, Victoria Toensing—now represents Sam Clovis and Mark Corallo, as well as (“informally,” they say) Donald Trump.61
Calling FBI director Comey a “dirty cop,” a liar, and “worse than a criminal,” diGenova says on The Laura Ingraham Show on October 13, 2016, that “his law firm will represent any FBI agent who comes forward and wants to testify before Congress about Comey’s [Clinton] investigation.”62 That an attorney who would say, in April 2018, that he and his wife “[play] the role of lawyers on television and in real life” for Donald Trump would go on-air less than thirty days before a general election offering to assist FBI agents in undermining Trump’s opponent—by way of testifying against the prosecutors who dropped her case—underscores how close to Trump’s orbit the effort to pressure Comey into reopening Clinton’s case finally was.63 It appears diGenova did not stop there, either; after LifeZette (founded by Laura Ingraham) reports on diGenova’s offer, the Daily Caller (founded by fellow Fox News personality Tucker Carlson) reports just ninety-six hours later that a group of FBI agents looking to blow the whistle on Comey has indeed found an “intermediary” to assist them.64 Moreover, the agents’ “intermediary” appeared to assist them within twenty-four hours of diGenova’s offering to do just that: “FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey urging the Justice Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information,” the Daily Caller writes. “According to an interview transcript given to The Daily Caller, provided by an intermediary who spoke to two federal agents with the bureau last Friday, agents are frustrated by Comey’s leadership.”65 The story, a Daily Caller “exclusive,” cites one person other than the FBI agents: Joe diGenova.66 The Daily Caller notes that “more FBI agents will be talking about the problems at the bureau. DiGenova notes the agents will specifically point to the handling of the Clinton case by Comey when Congress comes back in session.”67 The agents spoken to and aided by diGenova had repeated to the Daily Caller false claims about Clinton’s emails, saying “all the trained investigators [in the New York field office of the FBI] agree that there is a lot to prosecute [Clinton for] but he [Comey] stood in the way. The idea that [the Clinton email case] didn’t go to a grand jury is ridiculous.”68
What the Daily Caller does not disclose at the time is that it is, according to the New York Observer, “secretly” being paid “$150,000 . . . [or] even higher” by the Trump campaign in the form of advertising revenue—as the Trump campaign between September 2016 and Electi
on Day is paying the Daily Caller for use of its email list.69 That diGenova has in fact been planning to bring pressure to bear on Comey through FBI leaks to the media is evident from an interview he gives to WMAL 105.9 FM in Washington, D.C., the same week he speaks to Laura Ingraham, in which he reveals that he’s already been in touch with active FBI agents: “People [in the FBI] are starting to talk,” he tells his WMAL interviewer. “They’re calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked today to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so. . . . Comey thought this was going to go away. It’s not. People inside the bureau are furious. . . . [T]hey think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. . . . The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk.”70 That after advising these agents, diGenova goes on to advise Trump—and is still doing so well into the summer of 2018—is confirmed by another Trump attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who tells Politico in June 2018, “[Trump] will call four or five people like Joe [diGenova] and say, ‘What do you think? So and so says this. Who’s right?’ ”71 It is unclear for how long Trump has been advised by diGenova, though the question is a critical one; for instance, in March 2017, diGenova will be a vocal proponent of the fake news that former president Obama had tapped Trump Tower during the presidential transition in order to unmask transition officials involved in sensitive conversations.72 It’s a conspiracy theory lacking any evidence, and it will later be linked to an Israeli government-connected business intelligence firm—Black Cube, the chief competitor to Joel Zamel’s Wikistrat—but it is nevertheless quickly adopted by Trump in the early weeks of his administration.73
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