Special counsel Robert Mueller, as Law&Crime reported Friday, has been turning up the heat on former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone. Now CNN is reporting that Mueller has recordings of Stone in his possession.
We already knew that former Stone aides Andrew Miller and Kristin Davis have been in the sights of the Mueller Probe; the same is true of conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi and Stone acquaintance Randy Credico. Despite Credico’s incredulity about his plight, he has seemingly been a central figure when it comes to unraveling Stone’s contact with WikiLeaks ahead of the 2016 hack of the DNC and the pursuit of dirt on then-candidate Hillary Clinton.
Credico, you may recall, is the guy Stone reportedly asked to contact WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
According to CNN, however, Mueller’s examination of all things Stone seeks to uncover “whether Stone had backchannels to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election” that go beyond the Credico connection.
To that end, the special counsel has reportedly obtained recordings in which Stone said he “talked to Trump regularly” early on in the campaign. In another piece of evidence, Stone allegedly expressed that he should “receive credit for coordinating” with WikiLeaks. Per CNN:
Additionally, investigators are looking into whether Stone shared information that he believed was from WikiLeaks with members of Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a source familiar with the probe. Investigators have been provided recordings of Stone claiming he talked to Trump regularly early in the 2016 presidential campaign, CNN has learned. Later, after various document dumps from WikiLeaks, Stone claimed in separate communications he should receive credit for coordinating with the group, the source said.
Stone attorney Grant Smith responded to the report, saying that, at this point, the news about his client is like a broken record.
“We have said over and over again that he shared nothing with the campaign because he had nothing to share,” he said. “He received nothing from anybody. At what point does this old record get worn out from being played over and over again?”
Stone himself said that he “never discussed WikiLeaks stuff with Trump” and “would never have said I should get credit for coordinating with WikiLeaks since I did no such thing.”
In the past, Stone has said he believes the special counsel is out to “frame him.”
“I have testified truthfully before the House Intelligence Committee that Randy Credico was the source who confirmed Assange’s June 2016 CNN interview in which the Wikileaks publisher said he had substantial information on Hillary Clinton,” Stone said. “As I testified Credico told me this material would be released in October. I now realize that Credico’s source was a Wikileaks lawyer and not Assange himself. At no time did Credico tell me what the source, content or scope of the WikiLeaks disclosures would be.”
[Photo by Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images for Politicon]
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