Paul Manafort's relationship with Roger Stone dates back to the 1970s. In 1980, the two men (and two others) founded Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, a political consulting firm and lobbying firm. Donald Trump was an early client.
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Today, ABC News reports Special Counsel Robert Mueller is pressing Manafort, who recently pleaded guilty to avoid a second trial and agreed to cooperate, for more information about Trump's longtime political advisor.
Nearly a dozen individuals close to Stone have been brought in for interviews with the Mueller team, and many of those same individuals have also appeared before a federal grand jury.
Mueller’s interest in Stone appears to be focused on whether Stone or his associates communicated with Julian Assange or WikiLeaks about the release of damaging emails allegedly hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign by Russian intelligence officers masquerading as hacker persona “Guccifer 2.0.”
Some of Stone’s public statements from that time appeared to indicate that he knew in advance that WikiLeaks was preparing to publish information damaging to Clinton’s campaign.
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When asked what questions Mueller’s team might be asking Manafort — who recently pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in Washington, D.C. and is awaiting sentencing on 18 counts of financial crimes in Virginia — Stone told ABC News that it “certainly wouldn’t be surprising” that his investigators would question Manafort about him since he and Manafort “have been friends since childhood.”
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Manafort and Stone’s ties indeed run deep. In the early 1970s, Manafort and Stone both frequented the same circles of young GOP operatives working on national political campaigns. In 1977, when Stone was 24, he was elected president of the Young Republicans. Paul Manafort was his campaign manager.
Special counsel pushing Paul Manafort for information on Roger Stone: Sources (ABC News)