According to phone records, Roger Stone and Randy Credico texted about WikiLeaks' plans to expose Clinton emails six days before they became public.
“Big news Wednesday,” the Stone pal, radio host Randy Credico, wrote on Oct. 1, 2016, according to the text messages provided by Stone. “Now pretend u don’t know me.”
“U died 5 years ago,” Stone replied.
“Great,” Credico wrote back. “Hillary’s campaign will die this week.”
Credico turned out to be wrong on one count — nothing incriminating about Clinton came out that Wednesday. But two days later, on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks released its first dump of emails stolen from Podesta, altering the trajectory of the 2016 presidential election.
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... [T]he text messages provided by Stone to NBC News show that Credico appeared to be providing regular updates to Stone on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s plans in the days before the hacked emails were released. In the texts, Credico told Stone he had insights into Assange's plans through a longtime friend, who was also Assange’s lawyer, according to the text messages.
Reached Wednesday, Credico downplayed the text exchanges. “There's absolutely nothing there that I had any knowledge of anything that Assange was going to do because I didn't,” he told NBC News.
"Where's the smoking gun?" he added.
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“These text messages prove beyond dispute that Randy Credico was the source who told me of the significance of the material that Julian Assange told CNN he had and would publish in June 2016 and that Credico’s source was indeed a woman attorney who worked for WikiLeaks," Stone said. "If Randy said anything different to the grand jury, he perjured himself under oath.”
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The text messages obtained by NBC News appear to show that Stone and Credico exchanged messages about Assange having damaging information about Clinton at least as early as Aug. 27, 2016. The texts show that at 6:07 p.m. that day, Credico wrote to Stone, “Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary.”
Stone did not appear to reply to that particular message but the conversations ramped up over the following weeks.
“I think it’s on for tomorrow,” Credico texted Stone on Oct. 3, 2016, according to the messages obtained by NBC News.
The message is time-stamped 2:42 p.m. About 40 minutes earlier, Stone fired off a tweet suggesting he had intimate knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans. It’s not clear if a time zone difference meant that Stone had already received Credico’s message, or if there was another reason behind the timing of his tweet.
“I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp,” read Stone’s tweet.
Later that day, Credico texted Stone asking, “Why can't you get Trump to come out and say that he would give Julian Assange Asylum[?]” according to the texts obtained by NBC News.
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CNN has put together a timeline of Stone's public remarks in 2016 after he claimed to be in contact with WikiLeaks.
In those appearances, Stone does not say whether he discussed WikiLeaks with Trump or the campaign, but repeatedly claims contact with both, including direct conversations with Trump.
August 4, 2016: Stone responding on a conference call to a question about Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, says he recommend to Trump that he should hire Manafort, a former business partner of Stone's in the 1980s.
"I recommended him to Donald, because he called me on a Friday concerned about the fact that he had just been robbed of delegates in Louisiana."
Stone added later in the call, "Julian Assange is going to continue to drop information on the American voters that is going to roil this race."
Read More: Text messages show Roger Stone and friend discussing WikiLeaks plans (NBC News)
Timeline: Roger Stone repeatedly claimed contact with Donald Trump and his campaign while touting WikiLeaks connections (CNN)