by Nomad
Yesterday, right-wing conspiracy theory-monger, Jerome Corsi, said in an interview that he expects to soon be indicted by Robert Mueller as part of the Russian collusion investigation.
According to NBC News, Corsi is just s one of several associates of Roger Stone who have been called by Mueller to appear before a grand jury.
Corsi told his interviewer:
"I don't recall ever meeting [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange or getting information from anyone about what he had including the Podesta emails,. But they have all your emails and phone records…They're very good at the perjury trap."A perjury trap is simply a sly way of saying untrue things that contradict either the irrefutable evidence or earlier sworn testimony. In what can only be very bad news for Stone, Corsi is reported to be cooperating with Mueller, clearly terrified of going to prison.
"This was one of the most confusing and frightening things I've experienced. I'm 72 years and I'm afraid they're going to lock me up and put me in solitary confinement."For quite some time, Roger Stone- once the GOP's favorite dirty trickster and political mud-slinger- has been suspected of being one of Mueller's prime targets.
There's a good reason for that: Stone simply couldn't keep his mouth shut about his Russian/Wikileaks connections throughout the 2016 campaign.
For his part, Stone knows that Corsi's coming indictment could put him into deeper legal problems. He claimed that the FBI lawyers might have "squeezed poor Corsi to frame me."
He also said that it was possible to take individual communications "out of context to create a false impression" to the grand jury. Ironically, that's something he never said when the subject was Hillary's or Podesta's emails.
One helpful Reddit reader has compiled this record of events from the past two years re: Roger Stone. I have added a few more details to this chronicle.
Timeline
May 18, 2016: James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, warns of some indications of cyber attacks against the 2016 presidential election.
Summer 2016: During the 2016 campaign, 80-year-old GOP operative Peter W. Smith recruited a team to try to obtain Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails from “dark web” hackers — including hackers he thought were “probably around the Russian government.” Smith raised at least $100,000, from at least four donors.
One email written by Smith reportedly referenced plans to give part of the money raised to a scholarship fund for Russian students. The Wall Street Journal claimed that Smith was in regular, close contact with Michael Flynn, Trump’s chief national security adviser during the campaign.
(Smith would in May 2017 be found dead in a Minnesota hotel, with a plastic bag over his head and a source of helium attached.Offically, the death was listed as suicide.)
June 9, 2016: Three senior members of the 2016 Trump campaign – Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya meet at Trump Tower. The purpose of the meeting, according to the man who helped arrange it, was
"to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."That email proposal clearly states that the information would come from highest levels of the Russian government.
June 14, 2016: Washington Post reports that the Russia government hacked DNC computers.
June 15, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 claims responsibility for the hack as “a lone hacker.”
July 18-21: At the Republican national convention in Cleveland, Trump wins the party’s nomination to Republicans’ disbelief.
July 18, 2016: Just before the Republican National Convention, the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes to change the GOP's platform on Ukraine. The campaign announced that they would not call for the U.S. to give weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.
July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks publishes the first batch of almost 20,000 DNC emails, many of them discussing how to undermine Sen. Bernie Sander's campaign. WikiLeaks officials stated that the emails come from the accounts of "seven key figures in the DNC."
July 27, 2016: Trump invites the Russian state to search for the approximately 30,000 emails that Clinton was found to have deleted from her private server on the grounds that they were not related to government work.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”According to an indictment filed by Mueller, only hours after Trump's remarks, Russian hackers attempted “for the first time” to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office.
August 5, 2016: Stone’s article claiming Guccifer 2.0 and not Russia hacked DNC is published in the far-right news site, Breitbart.
August 8, 2016: In a video: Stone says he has communicated with Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange:
QUESTIONER: With regard to the October surprise, what would be your forecast on that given what Julian Assange has intimated he’s going to do?[Note: Stone would later claim he meant that he was communicating with Assange through “an intermediary.” A spokesperson for Assange has issued several denials including, “Wikileaks has had no contact with Roger Stone.” and “No communications, no channel”]
ROGER STONE: Well, it could be any number of things. I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.
August 12, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 releases Democrats’ records it says were taken from a breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)
August 12, 2016: @GUCCIFER_2 tweets at Stone:
“thanks that u believe in the real #Guccifer2″Note: "Guccifer 2.0" was not a lone hacker, but was actually a Russian military cyber intelligence team that has since been indicted. Western intel agencies believe the team acted on orders given by Putin.
August 13, 2016: Stone tweets at @wikileaks @GUCCIFER_2 that it is “Outrageous” that Twitter has suspended Guccifer’s account.
August 13, 2016: Stone tweets that Guccifer is a “HERO”
August 14 - September 9, 2016: Stone communicates privately with Guccifer 2.0 using Twitter’s Direct Messages.
(Only after a news outlet revealed the existence of these communications in March 2017, Stone publishes the exchange. Stone says this is the entirety of his communication with Guccifer, but the exchange ends abruptly, and there is no way of telling if the two did not continue through other Twitter accounts or other platforms.)
[Note: Stone does not notify law enforcement authorities.]
August 15, 2016: In one Direct Message exchange, Guccifer 2.0 asks Stone:
“do you find anything interesting in the docs i posted?”Aug. 15, 2016: According to legal filings on George Papadopoulos, after weeks of back and forth about a possible "off the record" trip to Moscow, a campaign supervisor writes in an email, " 'I would encourage you" and another foreign policy adviser to the Trump Campaign to 'make the trip [], if it is feasible.' " The trip did not take place.
August 17, 2016: Donald Trump is briefed by US intelligence agencies that Russia is implicated in the DNC hack. In addition, Trump is warned by counterintelligence specialists from the FBI that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign.
August 17, 2016: In one Direct Message exchange, Guccifer 2.0 says to Stone.
“please tell me if i can help u anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me.”Aug. 19, 2016: Manafort resigns from the Trump campaign amid reports of suspicious payments for work he did for Russian linked elements in Ukraine.
August 21, 2016: Stone tweets:
“Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”[Note: In an interview on October 19, Stone would later claim he had meant only that his tweet was not about Podesta’s emails but about business dealings, which he did not learn about from Wikileaks. Think Progress has a helpful analysis of why “Stone’s alibi falls apart.”]
August 22, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 sends** to Florida GOP operative Aaron Nevins 2.5 gigabytes** of data from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Nevins posts some of that data on his anonymous Florida politics blog.
Late August: Guccifer 2.0 may have thought/been aware that the FBI was monitoring his Direct Messages. That is revealed by a separate exchange with The Smoking Gun (TSG) news outlet, which would break the story, in March 2017, about the exchanges. In its March 2017 piece, TSG writes:
In late-August, TSG asked “Guccifer 2.0” about contact with Stone. After wondering, “why r u asking?,” “Guccifer 2.0” then accused TSG of receiving reportorial guidance from federal investigators: “the fbi’s tracing me, reading my dm [direct messages] and giving u hints. no?”Late Aug- Early Sept: According to the Steele dossier, Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen secretly meets with a prominent ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Konstantin Kosachev. Kosachev is senator at the Federation Council and chairs its Foreign Affairs Committee. Although Cohen denied the allegation, some sources state that Mueller now has evidence that the claim is true.
When further pressed, “Guccifer 2.0” said, “i won’t comment on my conversations with other ppl.” The self-professed “freedom fighter” added, “why r u so interested in stone? he’s just a person who wrote a story about me. or i don’t know some important stuff?”
Sept. 8, 2016: Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., meets with a Russian senior diplomat and politician, Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak in his Senate Office. This was something that Sessions categorically denied under oath during his confirmation hearings in March 2017, maintaining that he never met with Russians or intermediaries "about the Trump campaign," even though he was a top surrogate for the campaign at the time.
September 9, 2016: After asking Stone what Guccifer 2.0 can do to help, Guccifer 2.0 sends Stone a link to Nevins’ page containing DCCC’s turnout data and asks what Stone thinks. Stone replies, “Pretty Standard.”
[Note: If that type of information being disclosed is not pretty standard, then Stone’s reply is incriminating. Analysis by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo suggests it was not pretty standard. The Direct Message exchange between Stone and Guccifer then ends abruptly.]
September 20, 2016: Donald Trump, Jr. begins a secret email correspondence with Wikileaks. According to an article by The Atlantic Monthly:
The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation.October 2, 2016 (Sunday): Stone says on Alex Jones’ show:
“An intermediary met with him [Assange] in London recently who is a friend of mine and a friend of his, a believer in freedom. I am assured that the mother lode is coming Wednesday. It wouldn’t be an October surprise if I told you what it was but I have reason to believe that it is devastating because people with political judgment who are aware of the subject matter tell me this.”October 2, 2016 (Sunday): Stone tweets:
“**Wednesday **@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”October 3, 2016: Stone tweets:
“I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp”October 5, 2016 (Wednesday): Stone tweets: “Libs thinking Assange will stand down are wishful thinking. Payload coming #Lockthemup”
October 7, 2016: WikiLeaks’ publication of Podesta’s emails began two hours after the “Access Hollywood” story is published by the Washington Post.
[Note: The Washington Post may have given the Trump team some advance warning by seeking comment before publishing. The Post’s story states that the paper sought comment from NBC beforehand.]
October 12, 2016: The Daily Caller reports,
“Stone told TheDC that the release was actually delayed by Assange. ‘I was led to believe that there would be a major release on a previous Wednesday,’ Stone said.”Note-1: Examining this part of the Daily Caller’s interview with Stone, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti explains,
“Stone has effectively admitted in an interview that his statements in October saying something significant was about to drop were, indeed, references to the Podesta emails.”Note-2: As Mariotti also mentions, Stone has repeatedly said that he had “no advance notice about the hacking of Mr. Podesta.” Stone uses essentially that exact same phrase each time.
Stone’s blog, Breitbart interview, Reddit Ask Me Anything, local Florida television). What Stone does not say is whether he had no advance notice about the release of Podesta’s hacked emails.
In related news, Trump's lawyer-turned FBI informant, Michael Cohen suddenly and rather mysteriously appearing in Washington this week. After already giving Mueller more than 40 hours of interviews, there's more than enough speculation about what Cohen has left to say.
Sources familiar with the matter also say that the special counsel’s questioning of Cohen has focused on Trump’s alleged ties with Russia and the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.Could Cohen be supplying the evidence that Donald Trump and Roger Stone were working together? Cohen would know whether Trump was aware Stone's secret contacts with Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0. This could be the last piece in the Russian collusion puzzle.
It seems as though we shall soon find out.