A one-time Trump campaign adviser says that the 45th president may have been mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Friday morning indictment of longtime Donald Trump associate–and Richard Nixon aficionado–Roger Stone.
Appearing on MSNBC’s AM Joy on Saturday, former Trump 2016 communications and political adviser Sam Nunberg was asked about the six different occasions in which “senior Trump campaign officials” are mentioned in the Stone indictment.
Widespread press coverage has focused on the indictment’s allegation that one such campaign official was directed to contact Stone regarding allegedly stolen Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails which were eventually obtained and released by state secrets publisher Wikileaks.
The indictment reads, in relevant part:
After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.
Speculation about the specific “senior Trump Campaign official” referred to in the section above has run rampant since Stone’s indictment and is unlikely to cease any time soon. The titular MSNBC host threw some more fuel on that speculative fire on Saturday.
“Do you have any idea who the senior campaign officials [are] that were having these back-and-forth conversations? Joy Reid asked before noting, “I know at one point, there were emails The New York Times found where Steven Bannon is emailing [regarding Stone].”
Nunberg clarified that those Bannon-related emails were public information before turning his attention toward the Stone indictment.
“That’s in the back-end…what you’re talking about is in that July [2016] time frame. I don’t know specifically who it is.”
At this point, Reid interjected to ask, “Could it be Donald Trump?”
To which Nunberg replied:
Could it be Donald Trump who instructed them at that later paragraph? It could be but I don’t know. But yes, it could be. It could be.
Nunberg and Reid then parsed some of the language from the indictment.
“There’s a paragraph in the indictment that says that they were instructed by a senior campaign official,” Reid said.
“No, it says a senior campaign official was instructed to go back and they made sure to not–that’s at the same paragraph where they were extremely particular in writing ‘senior campaign official contacted,'” Nunberg argued before again conceding Trump’s possible involvement, “it could be.”
[image via screengrab/MSNBC]
