Just finished listening to Randi Rhodes show from today. Damn, that woman is on top off this. Explained what is going on with the Mueller/Manafort thing and how Mueller played both Manafort and Bonespurs for chumps while adding more possible charges of perjury and OoJ to come. Then she got got into the Corsi/Stone/Assange thing and the evidence against them, the emails between them that have been obtained. There's a lot of people that are going to burn for this. Not to mention she said that Mueller has more than thirty sealed indictments in the pipe and already approved by Rosenstein so Whitaker can't do a damn thing about them.
Rachel Maddow would be proud.
Good show, but we still have a central missing piece in all of this (we meaning us laymen), which is whether or not Corsi (or Stone) were told (or knew) from Assange that he was getting his information from the GRU.
We know that Stone and
presumably Assange had at least some communication with each other through
Twitter:
Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Stone and WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, communicated directly on October 13, 2016—and that WikiLeaks sought to keep its channel to Stone open after Trump won the election.
Here's a screenshot of at least part of the exchange that was provided to the House Intel committee:
Of note is what Stone said in his opening statement:
“I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist,” Stone told the committee in his prepared statement in September. The full hearing was held behind closed doors and the transcript has not been made public.
The key being, of course, the qualification of "direct" communication. Stone is exactly that kind of slippery prick. The screenshot shows he's having direct communication with someone evidently
from WikiLeaks, but even if it were Assange (and it likely would be), technically, because it says "WikiLeaks" and not "Julian Assange" he can make the above claim (though the second part is questionable).
More importantly in what he said in his prepared opening statement to the House (which
has been made public). After first invoking his parents fighting the Soviets in Hungary in the fifties--and numerous other such "tells"--he says (emphasis mine):
[L]et's be clear, I have no involvement in the alleged activities that are with the publicly stated scope of this Committe's investigation--collusion with the Russian state to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.
Why make that qualification? Publicly stated. As opposed to? Well, we see in just a bit, but the key point is that by specifying this angle, he also gets out a non-denial denial.
He then goes on to attack the intelligence community (and maintained throughout that there was no evidence of any Russian involvement period.
One example:
Our intelligence agencies have been politicized. I realize they are deeply unhappy over President Trump's refusal to expand the proxy war in Syria and their failure to obtain the no-fly zone promised to them by Hillary Clinton, which would be an open invitation for World War III. That the intelligence agencies have continued to leak, to the detriment of President Trump, in violation of the law, is proof positive of their politicization.
Iow, he's not guilty, none of this is real, it's ALL being manufactured by a butt-hurt monolithic military and intelligence community that wanted--and was "promised"--WWIII. So, once you discount such a ludicrous conspiracy, out goes any logical reason and the truth is revealed. Guilty.
He has deftly sidestepped EVERYTHING in this gambit. Or did he?
He then outlines the Committee's "three basic assertions against" him:
- The charge that "I knew in advance about, and predicted, the hacking of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's email"
- That "I had advanced knowledge of the source or actual content of the WikiLeaks disclosures regarding Hillary Clinton"
- That "my now public exchange with a persona that our intelligence agencies claim, but cannot prove, is a Russian asset"
Number 1 he dismisses as the result of people misconstruing his tweet about Podesta soon being in a "barrel" of trouble the way his childhood friend Manafort was then currently in a barrel of trouble--and his explanation makes no sense--but more importantly is this section:
The Tweet is also based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi...
Now, in regard to number 2 he says:
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeak's publisher Julian Assange, announced that he was in possession of Clinton DNC emails. I learned this by reading it on Twitter. I asked a journalist who I knew had interviewed Assange to independently confirm this report, and he subsequently did. This journalist assured me that WikiLeaks would release this information in October and continue to assure me of this throughout the balance of August and all of September. This information proved to be correct. I have referred publicly to this journalist as an "intermediary", "go-between" and "mutual friend." All of these monikers are equally true.
The "journalist" he's referring to here is also most likely Corsi (though according to the Atlantic piece linked above, Stone later identified radio host Randy Credico as the intermediary, who denied it), but note the time frame (August and all of September) and the fact that Stone specifically notes (in regard to 1) that his Podesta tweet was based on a:
comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing
Which was provided by Corsi. Now back to the
Atlantic piece:
Stone also exchanged private Twitter messages in August and September of 2016 with a user known as Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer claimed in a posting on their Wordpress site to have “penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers,” but the self-described hacker was later characterized by U.S. officials as a front for Russian military intelligence. Stone only published that exchange after it was revealed by The Smoking Gun, a website that publishes mugshots and other public documents.
So it is highly likely that it was Corsi who first allerted Stone to Guccifer. Confirmation can be found in this
Newsweek piece where Stone goes on another non-denial denial rant:
Special counsel Robert Mueller described infamous hacker Guccifer 2.0 as a Russian agent in his latest indictment released Friday, a direct contradiction of what Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, claimed last year.
Stone, who campaigned for Trump and previously admitted to having directly communicated with Guccifer, stated he believed it was incorrect to characterize Guccifer as a Russian agent and that it was merely “guessing.”
“Schiff: Mr. Stone was in direct communication with a creature of Russian GRU, Guccifer 2.0,” Stone told The Washington Post for a report in April 2017 while reciting testimony by U.S. Representative Adam Schiff of California.
Stone continued: “No, I don’t concede that! Wrong! Unsupportable. . . . It’s innocuous. Sorry guys, you cannot prove Guccifer is a Russian agent. When the intelligence services use the word ‘assessment' that means, ‘We don’t know. We’re guessing.’”
Mueller’s newest indictment cast conspiracy charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers that he accused of hacking the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The hackers obtained emails and other documents from the Democratic institutions.
But here's the key point (my bold):
Mueller’s team claimed the Russians posed as Guccifer and “communicated with U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents,” though Stone is not named in the 29-page indictment.
“On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, ‘thank u for writing back…do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs I posted?’” the indictment reads citing one email.
...
In a statement to Newsweek, Stone said his brief exchange with “someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 is benign based on its content, context and timing.” He also said Mueller's new indictment did not state that he had conspired with any of the defendants.
“This exchange is entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails, as well as taking place many weeks after the events described in today’s indictment and after Wikileaks had published the DNC material,” Stone said.
The indictment sidesteps Stone, because it's really talking about Corsi. Corsi is the "person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign".
So, Corsi investigates Guccifer and reports back to Stone who his source is, after which Stone then interracts with Guccifer as well. So the main question--which is likely already answered and why Corsi struck a deal--was whether or not Corsi discovered in his investigation of Guccifer whether or not Guccifer was a Russian agent.
It is almost a certainty that Corsi would have at least discovered in his investigation that Guccifer was
suspected of being a Russian agent, assuming Corsi is as good at finding dirt as would be implied by the simple fact that he's Stone's long time friend and confidant and that Stone entrusted him to conduct such a research project to begin with.
Hell, all he would have needed to do is find this article from July of 2016:
New Evidence Strengthens Guccifer 2.0’s Russian Connections from Foreign Policy.
Which in turn then makes sense as to why Stone would in fact publicly contact Guccifer in August and then again in September. As a cover story. The exact cover story that he has offered forth here in spite of the fact that he wasn't specifically named in the indictment!
Iow, evidently Mueller trapped Stone the same way he (allegedly) trapped Manafort.
ETA: This last bit is even more important, imo. It's how he responded (in part) to number 3:
To be clear, I have never represented any Russian clients, have never been to Russia, and never had any communication with any Russians or individuals fronting for Russians, in connection with the 2016 presidential election.
Seems straight-up, right? Well, read it this way:
I have never had any communication with any Russians in connection with the 2016 presidential election.
It may be entirely true that his communications with Guccifer were not in connection to the
election, specifically; they could instead have been about what information Guccifer had on Hillary Clinton. That would be an indirect connection, not a direct connection.
It's a fine hair, but then, Stone is the reigning expert in fine hairs.
