PANTS ON FIRE?
Roger Stone’s Ever-Changing Assange Explanations
Apparently inaccurate congressional testimony is the latest wrinkle in Roger Stone’s long-inconsistent description of his relationship with Julian Assange.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
A flamboyant personality and a love-hate relationship with scrupulous honesty helped former Trump campaign adviser and longtime presidential ally Roger Stone build an unlikely career. Those same traits, however, threaten to ensnare the political consultant in Robert Mueller’s ever-widening prosecutorial net.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Stone, in emails written to an associate of WikiLeaks founder-slash-embassy crasher Julian Assange, had solicited “damaging” information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the late stages of the 2016 presidential campaign.
In those emails, sent to radio personality and perennial candidate for New York office Randy Credico, Stone requested that Credico ask Assange release to him “emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011.”
“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30—particularly on August 20, 2011,” the Journal quotes one email as saying.
When told by Credico that WikiLeaks would likely have published such information if it possessed it, Stone replied: “Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???”
The emails appear to contradict Stone’s sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last September, during which he said his solicitation of information from WikiLeaks indicated that he “merely wanted confirmation” that Assange had information about Clinton.
That inconsistency is the latest wrinkle in Stone’s long-inconsistent description of his relationship with Assange, as well as any role he may have played in the actions of a Russian intelligence officer who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee.
On August 8, 2016, during a speech to the Southwest Broward Republican Organization, Stone told the audience that he was in communication with Assange regarding the Clinton Foundation, comments which were captured on video:
“I actually have communicated with Assange,” Stone told a questioner who had asked for a “forecast” of potential October surprises. “I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”
Stone would later claim he meant that he was communicating with Assange through “an intermediary.”