The Washington Post follows up on The Wall Street Journal's report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is intently focused on what contact Roger Stone had with WikiLeaks about stolen emails during the 2016 election.
The Post says Mueller's grand jury "has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages" pertaining to this matter.
Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.
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Last month, Randy Credico, a onetime Stone friend, told the grand jury that the Trump loyalist confided during the 2016 campaign that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In a series of interviews with The Washington Post, Stone said his only connection to the group was through Credico, a liberal comedian who had hosted Assange on his New York radio program in 2016.
The special counsel’s prosecutors have also zeroed in on Stone’s relationship with conservative journalist and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, examining whether he served as a conduit between Stone and Assange ...
In addition, investigators have scrutinized Stone’s communications with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks ...
One apparent line of inquiry: whether Stone lied to Congress about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks during the presidential race ...
According to charges filed by the special counsel in July, Russian military intelligence officers used an online persona called Guccifer 2.0 to distribute hacked Democratic emails through WikiLeaks. The Russian operatives also used Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account to send messages to Stone, who has said the exchanges were benign.
WikiLeaks has denied contact with Stone.
Stone told The Post that Credico “was my principal source regarding the allegedly hacked emails published by WikiLeaks,” a claim Credico has denied ...
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Credico has repeatedly denied passing any information from WikiLeaks to Stone. Rather, he said he may have speculated about the group’s tactics when he was with Stone. Credico has told allies that he believes Stone used him as a “decoy” to try to explain his claims of having a back channel to Assange.
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Mueller’s efforts to unentangle the conflicting accounts of Stone and Credico are complicated by the fact that both men are voluble showmen ...
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In an interview, Stone suggested that the special counsel may actually be interested in Corsi’s relationship with Trump.
Corsi was a leading proponent of birtherism, the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, he wrote the book “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President.”
Around that time, Trump took up the conspiracy theory, questioning Obama’s citizenship and demanding that he release his birth certificate.
Stone said that during a conversation with Trump in 2011, “he said to me, ‘Who is this guy, Jerome Corsi?’” Stone recalled.
Stone said he asked Trump why he was inquiring about Corsi.
“I’ve been talking to him,” Stone recalled Trump saying.
Stone said that Corsi also met with Trump during the 2016 campaign. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow declined to comment.
Mueller, Stone added, may have been “more interested in those meetings than anything to do with me.”
After The Post published its piece on Stone, he slammed the paper.
"Today’s Washington Post contains one of the shoddiest pieces of reporting that I have seen my 40 years in American Politics," Stone wrote in a statement forwarded to The Hill titled "THE WASHINGTON POST IS BUSTED."
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Stone in his statement proceeded to mark up the Post's report, which he called "rife with inaccuracies and material omissions."
Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens (WaPo)
Roger Stone slams 'busted' Washington Post over Mueller report (The Hill)