After Serving as a Pawn for Russia, Roger Stone Became a Pwn of Iran

Yeah, I know. I know.

I should have immediately written up the news — first reported by WaPo and then matched by CNN — that Roger Stone was hacked by suspected Iranian hackers and then his compromised account was used in an attempt to compromise a top Trump advisor.

Trump’s rat-fucker provided an interview in a story that WaPo appears to have subsequently buried, one in which the habitual liar claimed he was cooperating.

People familiar with the matter said the phishing attempt appears to have succeeded in compromising the communications of at least one person not formally connected to either campaign: Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Trump.

“I was informed by the authorities that a couple of my personal email accounts have been compromised,” Stone said in a brief interview. “I really don’t know more about it. And I’m cooperating. It’s all very strange.”

Stone’s account was used to send emails to the Trump campaign containing a link that, if clicked, could have allowed Iran to intercept the target’s other emails, the people familiar with the matter said.

His long-time lawyer, Grant Smith, confirmed Roger’s purported cooperation to CNN.

The FBI and other investigators probing the apparent hack-and-leak of Trump campaign documents, which Donald Trump has blamed on Iran, suspect that the hackers were able to compromise the personal email account of longtime Republican and Trump operative Roger Stone, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The hackers used access to Stone’s email account to try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official as part of a persistent effort to access campaign networks, one of the sources said. The hacking incident, which occurred in June, set off a scramble in the Trump campaign, the FBI and Microsoft, which spotted the intrusion attempts, to contain the incident and to determine if there was a broader cyber threat from Iran.

Stone was informed by Microsoft and the FBI that his personal email was compromised by a “Foreign State Actor,” with the intention of utilizing the account to phish officials in the Trump campaign into opening a link that would give perpetrators access to that person’s computer, one of the sources familiar said.

“Mr. Stone was contacted about this matter by Microsoft and the FBI and continues to cooperate with both,” said Grant Smith, an attorney for the Republican operative. “Mr. Stone will have no further comment at this time.”

Maybe we’ll get around to uncertainty over whether Stone was the account whence, Microsoft describes, someone on the Trump team was targeted or the more interesting question of whether Iran, or someone else, is the source of the files shared with Politico, WaPo, and NYT. Thus far, it seems clear that three Biden-Harris people avoided being hacked and the Trump advisor may have avoided being hacked too.

It’s just Roger, so far.

Until we learn more (such as the source of the materials shared with the press, which Roger Stone wouldn’t have an obvious purpose to have), the involvement of Roger in this — the fact that Iran successfully pwned him, of all people — is interesting for a different reason.

If you ignore the whole Andrii Derkach information operation from 2020 (which, questions about Hunter Biden’s laptop aside, didn’t involve digital compromise), the most successful known operation from 2020 actually involved the Iranians.

As former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs (who has already weighed in that this Iranian attempt is serious) described it in his January 6 Committee, some Iranian actors pretending to be Proud Boys targeted Democrats and pushed them to vote for Trump.

So I give you an example. 2020, October 22nd and 23rd, a series of emails start popping up in people’s email in-boxes throughout Florida and elsewhere. The emails claim to be from the Proud Boys, and they are saying, hey — and they tend to be targeting Democrats and – registered Democrats at least. And so the claims say, hey, we know you’re a registered Democrat. You have to change your registration and vote for Trump.

If you don’t, we’re going to come after you and we’ll know who you voted for.

And so we saw these coming in. And we —you know, the way we would address — deal with this, with any of these themes or claims is we would just systematically reverse engineer the claim. So the claim here is that we will know who you voted for. So it’s the law of the land in all 50 States of a secret ballot. That’s kind of the magic of American elections.

And so that was the hook for us, to say, these sorts of emails are coming out. The –it’s actually untrue that anyone would ever know who you voted for unless you tell them.

There is a secret ballot. So disregard, this is disinfo.

And that was the crux of rumor control, which we launched that Monday or Tuesday of the week of 21, 22, whatever it was, October.

[snip]

Q Now, I don’t want you to get into certainly any classified information, but I do think you’ve spoken publicly or it was disclosed that it turns out it was a foreign actor involved with the Proud Boys emails.

A It was Iran. Yes. And we went from first discovery of that email 11 a.m., 2 noonish maybe, when reports came out on Tuesday to standing in FBI headquarters that evening, Wednesday evening about 7 p.m., attributing that attack to Iranian — that influence operation to Iranian actors.

In other words, in 2020, Iran used the threat of Roger Stone’s mob, the Proud Boys, to intimidate Democratic voters (precisely the danger that made Stone’s threats to both Randy Credico and Amy Berman Jackson so bad during the Mueller investigation and aftermath).

And then, of all the people to exploit as a way to get to Trump, Iran chooses Trump’s rat-fucker, the same guy with close ties to the Proud Boys?

Iran seems to have a thing for Roger and his mob.