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Jerome Corsi’s Theory of Roger the Rat-Fucker’s Mule Prosecution

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I did something rash recently. I bought Jerome Corsi’s book, Silent No More.

It’s a … remarkable work of autobiographical fiction. It has two unbelievable chapters — one on how he met Stone and one claiming to describe how he figured out WikiLeaks had John Podesta’s emails; I’ll deal with the former in this post, and do a follow-up on the latter.

The rest of the book is a narrative of Corsi’s botched cooperation that is fairly clearly designed to provide all the details of his interactions with Mueller’s team to others, without, however, even clarifying details about events that should be central to the story.

Corsi continues to hide details of his Strip House trip with Stone

One of those missing details is what date Corsi introduced Stone to Ted Malloch over dinner at the Strip House in NYC. After that dinner, Stone had Corsi email two requests to Malloch, one of which is the email that appears in Corsi’s botched plea:

a. On or about July 25, 2016, Person 1 sent an email to CORSI with the subject line, “Get to [the founder of Organization 1].” The body of the message read: “Get to [the founder of Organization 1] [a]t Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending [Organization 1] emails . . . they deal with Foundation, allegedly.” On or about the same day, CORSI forwarded Person 1’s email to the overseas individual.

b. On or about July 31, 2016, Person 1 emailed CORSI with the subject line, “Call me MON.” The body of the email read in part that the overseas individual “should see [the founder of Organization 1].”

c. On or about August 2, 2016, CORSI responded to Person 1 by email. CORSI wrote that he was currently in Europe and planned to return in mid-August. CORSI stated: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.… Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers

A second request from Stone — which Corsi says was sent August 16 — Corsi describes as being limited to Bernie Sanders’ brother, but at least one other description I’ve heard about may also include a reference to WikiLeaks.

Here’s the context of Corsi’s two references to that dinner and his description of the August 16 email:

After meeting Roger Stone in February 2016, I arranged a dinner in New York City with Roger and Ted Malloch, a strong supporter of Donald Trump, for the next time both were in New York City at the same time. Malloch was anxious to assist the Trump campaign and he hoped Malloch [sic] could arrange to have him appointed to Trump’s presidential advisory staff—a hope that never materialized.

[snip]

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016, I sent Ted Malloch an email in the U.K., asking Ted if he could find Bernie Sanders’ brother who was in the U.K. at that time. My email to Malloch continued: “He (Bernie Sanders brother) is on the record of saying he plans to vote for Trump. Roger Stone suggested you might track down Sanders’ brother.” This was the third request Stone made of Malloch. At the dinner in New York City when I introduced Roger to Ted, Roger asked Ted to research Bill Clinton’s time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Roger believed Bill Clinton had been dismissed from the program because Clinton had raped a female graduate student at Oxford. Then, on July 25, 2016, I passed Roger’s email onto Ted, asking Ted to go see Assange in London. Ted waned [sic] an advisory position with the Trump campaign and Stone believed Malloch could improve his chances by scoring on one of these three requests. To the best of my recollection, Ted never said anything to me to suggest he had succeeded on any of the three requests.

One published version of the dinner puts it in late February or March, almost immediately after Corsi met Stone.

Corsi told the Guardian he introduced Malloch to Stone over steaks at the Strip House in midtown Manhattan in late February or March 2016. Mueller’s investigators “wanted to know about the dinner”, he said. When asked if Assange was discussed during the meal, Corsi said he was not a “human tape recorder”.

I think the actual date of the meeting is later, but if that date is right — given the possibility that WikiLeaks came up at the meeting — it would have Stone pursuing information about what WikiLeaks had around the same time as (possibly even before) the Russians first hacked John Podesta on March 19.

Update: One other detail of Corsi’s suppression of details about Malloch. In the book, he describes the only time he met with Trump during the campaign.

During the campaign, I only recall seeing Trump once up close, and that was as Trump was entering the elevator at Trump Tower. On that occasion, Trump jokingly pointed at me and said, “That’s trouble there.” The last time I recall having a telephone conversation with Trump was in 2011.

Elsewhere, however, he made it clear that that exchange happened with Malloch.

Corsi said he spoke to Trump only once during the 2016 presidential campaign. It happened when he brought London-based conservative author Ted Malloch to Trump Tower to show him the campaign headquarters and possibly meet Trump. Corsi said Malloch was interested in potentially doing policy work for the campaign.

Shortly after Corsi and Malloch entered the lobby, Trump happened to be getting into the elevator, Corsi said.

“We said hello. Trump points to me and he points to Malloch and he says, ‘There’s trouble there,'” Corsi said. “And he laughs, we laugh, and that’s the only time I spoke to Donald Trump [during the campaign].”

Corsi never explains what crime he stopped short of committing with Stone

The book is also entirely inconsistent with the fact that before Corsi first lied to Mueller’s prosecutors, his lawyer, David Gray, suggested that Corsi had had the opportunity to engage in, but stopped short of, committing some crime.

Gray said he was confident that Corsi has done nothing wrong. “Jerry Corsi made decisions that he would not take actions that would give him criminal liability,” he added, declining to elaborate.

Asked if Corsi had opportunities to take such actions, Gray said, “I wouldn’t say he was offered those opportunities. I would say he had communications with Roger Stone. We’ll supply those communications and be cooperative. My client didn’t act further that would give rise to any criminal liability.”

As I note here, Gray’s pre-interview comments make it really hard for Corsi to claim faulty memory.

Corsi emphasizes Stone’s ongoing, yet deniable, role in Trump’s campaign

I raise those two details as background to what Corsi lays out in the chapter called, Meet Roger Stone. It describes:

  • Meeting Stone for the first time on February 22, 2016
  • Claiming that Stone’s campaign role as an “outside adviser” was intentionally designed to give Trump plausible deniability regarding Stone’s “various maneuvers”
  • Learning that — at least in February 2016 — Stone spoke to Trump every day and got him to adopt about 70% of his suggestions
  • Giving Stone the credit for getting Paul Manafort hired

And then it goes into a theory of Stone’s crime, real or imagined, I’m not sure which.

Corsi avoids the GRU indictment like the plague but nevertheless suggests Stone could be the mule

Mind you, I’m not sure if this is Corsi’s theory about what Stone actually did or what he thinks Mueller thinks Stone did (the theory is somewhat inconsistent with what Corsi suggests Mueller thinks Stone did as presented later in the book, which is more focused on Julian Assange). In part, it addresses what he seems to think Democrats suspect about Stone.

Democratic opponents of Trump raised the question that if Roger Stone had known in advance that Assange was holding the Podesta emails, as evidenced by his tweet on August 21, was it possible Stone had colluded with the Russians and with WikiLeaks? Had all this happened by accident or were the WikiLeaks DNC email drops just Roger Stone’s crowning achievement in a career distinguished by dirty tricks. Put simply: Did Roger Stone coordinate with Russia to steal the DNC emails and give them to WikiLeaks, having having arranged with Assange in advance a strategy to use the hacked DNC emails to prevent Hillary from achieving the White House?

But it ends by suggesting that when he was first subpoenaed, he “suspected immediately” that he was a key link in a theory that (bizarrely) had Stone serving as a mule between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks (it’s worth noting that Corsi claims to believe, erroneously, that the Podesta emails came from a DNC server, in which case the reference could be about the Podesta emails).

On August 28, 2018, when I was served the subpoena from the Mueller grand jury, I suspected immediately the prosecutors in the Special Counsel office were in possession of evidence that suggested I might have been the link between Stone and Assange. As David Gray and I prepared to go to Washington, we speculated Mueller may have targeted me as the link who provided Stone his advance knowledge in August 2016 that Assange possessed DNC emails from John Podesta that WikiLeaks planned to release serially over a number of days as the 2016 “October Surprise,” designed to deal a knock-out punch to the Clinton campaign. If I was Stone’s link to Assange, was this the connection with WikiLeaks that Stone used to get WikiLeaks the Guccifer 2.0 hacks of the DNC computers?

The theory relies on a really weird timeline of the relevant events, which I’ve reproduced below. Several things stick out about the timeline. First, Corsi dates WikiLeaks’ indexing of Hillary’s FOIAed emails as part of WikiLeaks’ election year activities (something he continues later in the book). That’s interesting because of Cambridge Analytica’s related efforts in that early period (not to mention the funding of an attack on Hillary as being close to Russia), as well as the way a WikiLeaks’ request for Hillary’s speech transcripts precedes the John Podesta hack. If Corsi knows that that indexing was part of a larger campaign (and as I’ll show in the follow-up post, he does know stuff about WikiLeaks he should not), then it suggests that he knows that WikiLeaks knew the hacks were coming.

The timeline is also weird for the way it jumps over all the exchanges between Stone and Corsi in the aftermath of the DNC email release, details that are absolutely central to the rest of the narrative in the book.

It’s oddest, however, in the way this chapter makes no mention of the initial Guccifer 2.0 posts, even though in his chapter purporting to explain how he knew Podesta’s emails were coming, Corsi admits to having tracked those releases very closely (and links two of the posts). Just as notably, Corsi’s narrative only mentions Mueller’s GRU indictment indirectly (an odd habit he continues in his Podesta explanation), instead relying on the 2018 coverage of the indictment for his claims about what’s in it. Even there, however, Corsi doesn’t link the coverage (not even Fox!) where Stone admitted he’s the person cited in the GRU indictment. This leads Corsi to treat the mention of Stone in the GRU indictment to be merely “suspect” rather than confirmed.

Clearly, Stone’s tweets with Guccifer 2.0 target him as a likely suspect for that person, especially given that Stone remained in regular contact with Trump even after Stone resigned as Trump’s political advisor.

Perhaps both those choices are just attempts to avoid acknowledging familiarity with the evidence that would utterly disprove his later whack theories about the Podesta emails (which go well beyond the Podesta emails). But it seems to adopt a very indirect method to avoid admitting that, yes, Stone was DMing with  Guccifer 2.0, but that nothing in the public record suggests those DMs were criminal in any way.

Let me be clear: There’s nothing in the public record that suggests Stone had a role in getting any files from the Russians to WikiLeaks (though I considered the possibility Guccifer 2.0 was a source for the men here). But the handoff of the Podesta emails is part of the operation that remains unexplained. And even while Corsi goes to great lengths to spin up this theory of Stone’s prosecution, he (a guy who puts his PhD in his Twitter handle) studiously avoids the primary sources that make this case.

Timeline

February 22, 2016: Stone and Corsi first meet

March 16, 2016: First WikiLeaks drop (in reality, indexing of documents obtained via FOIA)

July 13, 2016: Guccifer 2.0, a hacker who previously claimed to have breached the computers of the DNC, released a cache of purported DNC documents to The Hill

July 14, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 sends WikiLeaks link to archive of DNC documents [Corsi botches this section badly, in part by getting the year of the GRU indictment wrong]

July 22, 2016: DNC release “Julian Assange timed the release of the DNC emails to be the Friday before the DNC National Nominating Convention”

July 24, 2016: DWS resigns

July 24, 2016: Robby Mook announces Russia hacked emails “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump”

July 25, 2016: Assange tells NBC “there is no proof whatsoever” he got emails from Russia

August 21, 2016: Stone tweets “Podesta’s time in the barrel”

October 7, 2016: WikiLeaks starts dumping Podesta files

November 7, 2016: “final WikiLeaks post … dropped by WikiLeaks on November 7, 2016, three days after the presidential election was held.”

March 10, 2017: Stone post Corsi relies on to describes his DMs with Guccifer 2.0

July 13, 2018: WaPo story on Stone and the GRU indictment

July 15, 2018: NYT story on GRU indictment

August 28, 2018: Corsi subpoena

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

NYT’s Trump Interview: Money for Nothing and Clicks for Free

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The NYT has an article this morning it purports to be from an interview with the President.

Here’s what it says about the Russian investigation:

Addressing a wide range of subjects, Mr. Trump brushed off the investigations that have consumed so much of his presidency, saying that his lawyers have been reassured by the departing deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, that the president himself was not a target. “He told the attorneys that I’m not a subject, I’m not a target,” Mr. Trump said. But even if that is the case, it remains unknown whether the matter would be referred to the House for possible impeachment hearings.

[snip]

Mr. Trump said he has likewise received reassurances from Mr. Rosenstein, who until Attorney General Jeff Sessions was fired in November was overseeing the Russia investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

“Rod told me I’m not a target of the investigation,” he said at one point, but then later suggested he had not talked with him directly. “The lawyers ask him. They say, ‘He’s not a target of the investigation.’” Asked if that also covered the separate investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, he said, “I don’t know about that.”

Neither Mr. Rosenstein nor Mr. Mueller has said whether Mr. Trump is a target, and the president could not recall when Mr. Rosenstein would have assured him. Mr. Mueller has been known to explore whether the president’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice. But since Justice Department policy bars indicting a sitting president, it is unclear whether the term “target” would apply.

Mr. Trump denied having anything to do with Mr. Stone’s involvement with WikiLeaks, which during the 2016 campaign posted Democratic emails online that were stolen by Russian intelligence services. He expressed sympathy for Mr. Stone for his arrest at the hands of heavily armed F.B.I. agents.

“I’ve always liked — I like Roger, he’s a character,” Mr. Trump said, insisting that the F.B.I. agents charging “a house like they did at six o’clock in the morning. I think that was a very sad thing for this country.”

Mr. Trump offered a vague account of his involvement in the proposed Moscow project. Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project and told the authorities that talks continued into the summer of 2016, even as Mr. Trump was securing the Republican nomination.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s current lawyer, said recently that talks went all the way through the November election, only to later claim that he was mistaken and speaking only hypothetically.

“He was wrong,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday. “Rudy has been wrong a little bit. But what has happened is this: I didn’t care. That deal was not important. It was essentially a letter of intent or an option.”

Asked when in 2016 the last conversation he had about the project was, he said, “I would say it was early to middle of the year. Now, I don’t know that Cohen didn’t go a little bit longer than that. I don’t think it would be much longer.” He added: “I was running for president; I was doing really well. The last thing I cared about was building a building.” [my emphasis]

Already in that excerpt, NYT gets something that Maggie is obstinately wrong about wrong: not only is Mueller obviously investigating Trump in the conspiracy in chief (which is all Mueller has asked him about), but he is or was investigating him as part of a counterintelligence investigation. The obstruction is the chump change of the investigation, yet the only thing the NYT mentions here.

But NYT posted an excerpted transcript–which takes out both off the record comments, including this one on Roger Stone where Trump goes from suggesting “we’ll do something” about Roger Stone being treated very badly and then bridging, in off the record content, to Stone’s claim he would never testify against Trump.

HABERMAN: Who else has been treated very badly, in your opinion?

TRUMP: Well, I’d rather save it for later. We’ll do something on it at the right time, but I did think this. When Roger Stone, who all of us know, I mean everybody knows Roger.

______________

TRUMP: He was not my consultant. But if you read the papers you know it’s like — the media, it’s like — but I’ve always liked him. He’s a character, and I’ll tell you what people respect what he said. Bearing false witness, etc. But yeah, people do respect what he said.

HABERMAN: What he said about what?

TRUMP: Bear false witness. I will never testify against the president.

It also removes “asides,” which for a verbal logorrhean like Trump are among the most important things he says.

But the other details in the transcript reveal how much the NYT spun what they got. First, as a number of people have noted, Trump corrected himself, repeatedly to make it clear that the only denial he got was about being a target — “target … target … target … target” — not a subject. NYT shouldn’t have included the mention of being a “subject,” at all.

NYT also doesn’t reveal that Maggie herself laid out the timing — “over the course of the last year” — on such reassurances, before complaining that Trump wasn’t more specific about the timing, when in fact he simply blew off the question.

HABERMAN: Has Rod Rosenstein given you any sense over the course of the last year about whether you have any exposure, either in — or there’s any concerns, or whether you’re a target of the Mueller report?

TRUMP: Well he told the attorneys that I’m not a subject, I’m not a target.

HABERMAN: He told your attorneys?

TRUMP: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[snip]

HABERMAN: Do you remember how long ago he said that?

TRUMP: I think the lawyers would speak to him a lot about that. Not a lot. But a number of times. He never said — I never asked him that question.

HABERMAN: But your lawyers have?

TRUMP: The lawyers ask him. They say, “He’s not a target of the investigation.”

Then, Maggie gets something subtly wrong about Trump’s denials of any ties to Stone’s efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks.

HABERMAN: Did you ever tell him to — or other people to get in touch with them?

TRUMP: Never did.

HABERMAN: You saw that was in the indictment.

TRUMP: Can I tell you? I didn’t see it.

The indictment doesn’t say that Trump directed specific people to get in touch, themselves, with WikiLeaks. Rather, it says that someone “was directed” to contact Stone.

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.

It’s a subtle difference, but one important given that we know Stone was using cut-outs himself, and used cut-outs in his phone calls to Trump during the campaign.

Finally, Peter Baker gets Trump to admit something amazing over and over, but it doesn’t make the final argument. Trump says the Trump Tower deal was no big deal because he didn’t have to put any money up.

BAKER: But you told people that you didn’t have any business there. People might have misunderstood.

TRUMP: That wasn’t business. Peter, that wasn’t business.

BAKER: Isn’t that misleading to say you weren’t pursuing business there, right?

[Crosstalk]

TRUMP: I had no money invested. It was a letter of intent, or option. It was a free option. It was a nothing. And I wasn’t doing anything. I don’t consider that even business. And frankly, that wasn’t even on my radar. If you take a look at that, take a look at the deal. There was no money put up. There was no transfer. I don’t think they had a location. I’m not even sure if they had a location.

[snip]

BAKER: Clearly there was a hope of having money. That was the reason you were pursuing it, right?

TRUMP: My point is this — It was a free option to look at a deal, to look at deals. That was not like, “I’m going to buy a property in Moscow. I’m going to do — or I’m building a building in Moscow.” Now, I would have had every right to do a deal. That’s what I did. That’s what I did.

[snip]

But the way I view it is early in the year to middle of the year, no interest. I had very little interest in the first place, and again, I viewed it as a free option. [my emphasis]

This is the entire point! Trump was being offered $300 million … for free. Trump uses that to dismiss the import of the deal with respect to his campaign. But a free $300 million is a lot closer to a bribe — and therefore even more inexcusable — that an opportunity to shell out real money for a tower.

Finally, this language deserves more attention. The NYT actually gets a reference Trump makes badly wrong. Trump is not referring to Tony Podesta here. He’s referring to John Podesta.

TRUMP: I have nothing. All I did was be a good candidate. Russia didn’t help me. Russia did not help me. There was no collusion. There was none of that. I was a good candidate. I did a good job. I won’t say whether she was a good candidate or not. I mean, the primary collusion was Hillary Clinton. If you take a look, Peter. I mean, look at that phony dossier. Some of that money, they say, went to Russia. [Tony] Podesta was involved with Russia. [my emphasis]

That was precisely the [Joule Holdings] attack that Stone and Jerome Corsi book-ended their outreach to WikiLeaks over. It seems important to get it correct.

And in such immediate context, the fact that Trump claimed, again, that Russia didn’t help him deserves a fact check.

Of course they did. They may not have delivered on that $300 million “free option,” yet. But they certainly helped with the election, including an attack on John Podesta that the NYT doesn’t even recognize.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Terabytes of Rat-Fucker Data Trail

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We often talk details about the Mueller investigation that should make Donald Trump worry.

And I think the government’s motion to declare Roger Stone’s prosecution a complex case ought to do that.

According to the filing, Mueller’s team has got “terabytes of electronic records and data” from Stone, including a bunch of stuff that doesn’t look directly pertinent to an obstruction case, but might look more interesting given the hints of campaign finance violations in this investigation. Or worse.

I’m particularly interested in this paragraph:

It is composed of multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information consisting of, among other things, FBI case reports, search warrant applications and results (e.g., Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts), bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (e.g., cellular phones, computers, and hard drives). The communications contained in the iCloud accounts, email accounts, and physical devices span several years. [//] The government also intends to produce to the defense the contents of physical devices recently seized from his home, apartment, and office. Those devices are currently undergoing a filter review by the FBI for potentially privileged communications.

The implication is everything before the bracket — the multiple cell phones, computers, and hard drives, his iCloud and email accounts, and the aforementioned financial records — have already been in Mueller’s possession. It’s just the things after the bracket — more physical devices — that may or may not be new to the FBI. When, in Stone’s indictment, Mueller referred to all the “emails and text messages … STONE was still in possession of” when he lied to the House Intelligence Committee about having any such documents, that’s how prosecutors knew.

For most of the year during which prosecutors have been obtaining testimony from Stone’s associates, one by one, they’ve been been sitting on a mountain of evidence, and evidence not relating exclusively to the obstruction charges against Stone.

This designation as a complex case will give Stone some time to think about that.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

The Big Dick Toilet Salesman Speaks

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Yesterday, Matt Whitaker got asked about the Mueller probe. After saying he wasn’t going to comment about an on-going investigation and mid some hemming and hawing, he suggested his prior comments about the Mueller investigation were wrong and then said the Mueller investigation is “close to being completed.”

You know, I’ve been fully briefed on the investigation. And I look forward to Director Mueller delivering the final report. And I’m really not going to talk about an open and on-going investigation otherwise. But, you know, sort of the statements that I’ve made were as a private citizen, only with publicly available information. Um, I am comfortable that the decisions that were made are going to be reviewed. You know, either, through the various means we have. But right now the investigation is, I think, close to being completed. And I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as we can–as soon as possible.

Ken Dilanian, who recently had a “scoop” that Mueller may submit his “report” by mid-February, tweeted the comment over and over. Devlin Barrett, who recently suggested the slapdown of the BuzzFeed story reporting that Trump “directed” Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was a complete rebuttal of that story said that, “this has been guessed at, hinted at, and suggested before, but it has not been said by any senior official before. it’s a big deal.”

Mueller is still pursuing information from the Mystery Appellant. He is still pursuing testimony from Roger Stone associate Andrew Miller. Indeed, in the wake of Stone’s indictment, Mueller told Miller’s attorney they still want that testimony to support additional charges.

A defense attorney for Andrew Miller, who’s fighting a subpoena from Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, learned Monday afternoon that the special counsel still wants witness testimony for a federal grand jury.

Paul Kamenar, the defense attorney, says the assertion from Mueller’s team made clear to him that Mueller and the Justice Department are considering an additional indictment of Roger Stone or have plans to charge others.

And, of course, FBI seized a bunch of evidence from Stone on Friday. William Barr will soon be confirmed as Attorney General, alleviating one of the only reasons (because he’s not reporting to a Senate confirmed official) why Mueller’s authority to indict people might not be sound.

I’ve been told by people who have key witnesses as sources that Mueller is close to the end of his investigation. But their reports sound nothing like what the Big Dick Toilet Salesman or reporters relying on him as a source said yesterday.

But even if Mueller is close to being done, reports from a Big Dick Toilet Salesman that this is heading towards a report should be taken as the statements of a man hired to make statements like this. The actual evidence suggests that Mueller is still pursuing damning conspiracy indictments.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Unwinding a Multithreaded Beast

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This is more than the usual caveat asking readers to note the byline on this post. I’m not the expert at this site on the investigations by Special Counsel’s Office or any other law enforcement body — for that see Marcy’s or bmaz’s posts and comments.

However I spend a lot of time on information technology, which is how I ended up reading a report on internet-mediated information warfare.

Last year the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing about Foreign Influence on Social Media. One of the commissioned and invited research organizations was New Knowledge (NK), a cybersecurity/information integrity consultancy. NK’s director of research delivered prepared remarks and a whitepaper providing an overview of Russia’s influence operations and information warfare program.

The paper is a peppy read; it will little surprise those who have followed the Trump-Russia investigation and the role social media played in the 2016 election. But there are still bits which are intriguing — more so months after the paper was first delivered,  in light of long-time ratfucker Roger Stone’s indictment this past week.

Note these two excerpts from the report:

There wasn’t a link in the indictment last year of the Russian Internet Research Agency personnel with Stone’s indictment. The IRA charges don’t overlap with Stone’s at all (count numbers from indictments in paren.).

Stone:
(1) Obstruction of Proceeding
(2-6) False Statements
(7) Witness Tampering

IRA:
(1) Conspiracy (to gain unauthorized access, hack and steal information)
(1) Wire Fraud Conspiracy
(3-7) Wire Fraud
(8,9) Aggravated Identity Theft
(10) Conspiracy Commit to Money Laundering

But Stone’s indictment reveals an interesting overlap of threads between Stone’s efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign and the information warfare operation the IRA conducted in 2016.

Why was the IRA propelling content to fluff Assange’s credibility in the days before the release of the hacked emails Stone was trying to manage? This is a rather odd service to offer as a tenth anniversary gift to a so-called journalism outlet which should be able to point to its achievements on its own.

The IRA wasn’t alone in its Assange cred-fluffing. What a coincidence the UK tabloid DailyMail also touted Assange’s ability to affect Clinton’s campaign with a release of hacked emails — and at nearly the same time the IRA was pumping up Assange’s image.

How odd this DailyMail piece was pegged to Wikileaks’ anniversary, but the headline on the article and subhead treat the anniversary as an afterthought compared to the hacked emails and their effect on the Clinton campaign.

It doesn’t look like social media alone manipulated public perception, or that manipulation was confined to U.S. media.

Perhaps these two threads — the IRA’s influence operation/information warfare and Stone’s hacked email ratfucking — weren’t directed by a common entity. The public may not know depending on the course of SCO’s criminal and counterintelligence investigations and what information is released. But they certainly sewed toward the same outcome.

Two Details That Many Are Missing in/about the Stone Indictment

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I’ve been traveling most of the day to get out of the Midwest before the snow and record low temperatures show up, and will be buried for three days working on things that have nothing to do with any investigation Mueller has been involved in since 2013.

But I do want to add two details to the parlor game going on about whether or not the Roger Stone indictment is the tip of a conspiracy-burg or evidence there’s no there there. Joyce White Vance argues that Mueller charged Stone the way he did to hide the rest of the conspiracy prosecution.

Why didn’t Mueller charge Stone with conspiracy? The rules in federal cases require that prosecutors provide defendants with broad discovery. By indicting Stone on a fairly narrow set of charges, Mueller limits what has to be disclosed & can protect ongoing investigation.

Randall Eliason offers a respectable version of the argument that the indictment suggests there won’t be a conspiracy case.

There have always been at least two possible end games for the Mueller investigation. He could uncover evidence of a widespread criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians to influence the election. Or he could conclude that the campaign’s numerous documented interactions with Russians seeking to help Trump win were not criminal, but people close to Trump lied to cover up those interactions because revealing them would have been politically devastating.

Stone’s indictment falls into the coverup category. Mueller may have evidence of the broader conspiracy, and more charges may well be coming. But every case like Stone’s, or those against former campaign manager Paul Manafort, that is filed without charging a conspiracy with the Russians makes it seem more likely that criminal charges brought by the special counsel will end up being primarily about the coverups.

Andy McCarthy offers a less respectable version of the same.

Neither Eliason nor McCarthy account for one of the only new details in the indictment, showing that an unidentified Steve Bannon associate congratulated Stone on October 7.

On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails stolen from the Clinton Campaign chairman. Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of the high-ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read “well done.” In subsequent conversations with senior Trump Campaign officials, STONE claimed credit for having correctly predicted the October 7, 2016 release.

This detail shows that the Trump campaign at least believed that Stone succeeded in getting WikiLeaks to drop the John Podesta emails to distract attention from the Access Hollywood video, which in turn is consistent with a claim Jerome Corsi made about Stone having advance knowledge of the Access Hollywood video and that he and Stone succeeded in timing the email release.

 Corsi wrote in his forthcoming 57,000-word book that he told Zelinsky that Stone told him in advance that the “Access Hollywood” tape would be released.

He wrote that “although I could not remember exactly when Roger told me, or the precise substance of the discussion, I remembered Roger told me before the Washington Post went to press with the Billy Bush tape that the tape was coming and that it would be a bombshell.”

Corsi said he had three phone calls with Stone in the hours before the release of the tape.

“I know nothing about that, either does Jerry Corsi,” Stone told TheDCNF. When asked why Corsi might be motivated to make a false claim, Stone said: “He’s saying this because the prosecutors induced him to say it.”

Corsi also wrote that Zelinsky revealed that prosecutors had evidence of an email exchange between he and Stone “in which Stone expressed pleasure that Assange had released the Podesta emails as instructed.”

Corsi said he replied that he and Stone “should be given credit” for the release.

While Stone disputes Corsi’s claim and Corsi feigns forgetfulness about precisely what happened, by including a communication showing Stone getting credit for the timing, Mueller is suggesting that Corsi is right — and that he has credible, corroborating evidence to prove it.

That’s more coordination — between Corsi and Stone, but more importantly between some go-between and WikiLeaks — than would be the case if Stone’s indictment were all Mueller had. It would put Stone and Corsi in a conspiracy with WikiLeaks and their go-between(s).

Then there’s this detail from the motion to seal Stone’s indictment that no one has yet offered a full explanation for (indeed, most of the reports that noted that Amy Berman Jackson had been assigned the case didn’t explain this detail at all).

Someone — and it would almost certainly have to be the prosecutors (including one who, DC US Attorney’s office prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, is on the internet Research Agency case),  — told the court that Stone’s namby pamby “process crime” is related to the big conspiracy case involving WIkiLeaks with a bunch of Russian hackers. (I’ve updated my running docket of Mueller and potentially related cases to reflect Stone’s indictment.) And while it’s true that Stone is described in the GRU indictment, he is not named in a way that the court would identify that by themselves. WikiLeaks shows up in both, but there’s no need to tie WikiLeaks cases together unless some defendant is going to show up to face prosecution (and WikiLeaks is does not take any of the overt acts described in the Stone indictment).

I don’t pretend to understand how this happened or what it all means. But there’s nothing about the Stone obstruction prosecution that would overlap with the evidence in the GRU indictment. And, as charged, the GRU indictment won’t be prosecuted at all until Julian Assange or someone else involved in it ends up in DC to face charges.

By all means, continue the parlor game. But at least explain how those two details fit into your theory of nothing-“berder” or grand conspiracy.

Update: By popular demand, I’m including the definition of a “related case” under DC’s local rules.

A related case for the purpose of this Rule means as follows:

(1) Criminal cases are deemed related when

(i) a superseding indictment has been filed, or

(ii) more than one indictment is filed or pending against the same defendant or defendants, or

(iii) prosecution against different defendants arises from a common wiretap, search warrant, or activities which are a part of the same alleged criminal event or transaction. A case is considered pending until a defendant has been sentenced.

Certainly, WikiLeaks is named as a co-conspirator in both. But it is not yet a defendant. Though both cases may rely on a wiretap targeting Wikileaks. Or perhaps Stone’s search warrant included his conversations with Guccifer 2.0, and so the other indictment.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

How Roger the Rat Fucked Himself

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After the FBI arrested Roger Stone today, they conducted searches on his homes in Florida and NYC. It will be interesting to see whether and if so how much evidence they found in his homes.

That’s because — in spite of the fact that Stone has been rat-fucking for almost a half century, and in spite of the fact that Stone was willing to risk major prison time as part of a cover-up, Stone utterly fucked himself by keeping incriminating materials around and leaking them out via journalists.

If Ronald Reagan is rolling in his grave today because the Air Traffic Controllers showed that by working collectively they could be more powerful than a President, then Richard Nixon is rolling in his grave today that a guy still branded with his face failed the cover-up so much worse than Nixon himself (Unrelatedly, but hysterically, the Nixon Foundation released a statement today effectively calling Stone a coffee boy).

Consider this passage in his indictment for lying to the House Intelligence Committee:

STONE’s False and Misleading Testimony About His Possession of Documents Pertinent to HPSCI’s Investigation

22. During his HPSCI testimony, STONE was asked, “So you have no emails to anyone concerning the allegations of hacked documents . . . or any discussions you have had with third parties about [the head of Organization 1]? You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever, any kind of that nature?” STONE falsely and misleadingly answered,  “That is correct. Not to my knowledge.”

23. In truth and in fact, STONE had sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the 2016 campaign in which he discussed Organization 1, its head, and its possession of hacked emails. At the time of his false testimony, STONE was still in possession of many of these emails and text messages, including:

a. The email from STONE to Person 1 on or about July 25, 2016 that read in part, “Get to [the head of Organization 1] [a]t Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending [Organization 1] emails . . . they deal with Foundation, allegedly.”;

b. The email from STONE to Person 1 on or about July 31, 2016 that said an associate of Person 1 “should see [the head of Organization 1].”;

c. The email from Person 1 to STONE on or about August 2, 2016 that stated in part, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”;

d. Dozens of text messages and emails, beginning on or about August 19, 2016 and continuing through the election, between STONE and Person 2 in which they discussed Organization 1 and the head of Organization 1;

e. The email from STONE on or about October 3, 2016 to the supporter involved with the Trump Campaign, which read in part, “Spoke to my friend in London last night. The payload is still coming.”; and

f. The emails on or about October 4, 2016 between STONE and the high-ranking member of the Trump Campaign, including STONE’s statement that Organization 1 would release “a load every week going forward.”

24. By falsely claiming that he had no emails or text messages in his possession that referred to the head of Organization 1, STONE avoided providing a basis for HPSCI to subpoena records in his possession that could have shown that other aspects of his testimony were false and misleading.

To be clear, I’m sure that Mueller has independent basis for his knowledge that, “At the time of his false testimony, STONE was still in possession of many of these emails and text messages,” showing that he talked about what documents Assange had. As I’ve said, I think it highly likely Stone was included among those on whose phones Mueller got a warrant in March of last year. And if he could get a warrant for Stone’s phone, he obviously could get a warrant for Stone’s email (and probably issued preservation orders when he became Special Counsel in May 2017, if FBI hadn’t already done so).

But Mueller would have had proof that Stone had possession — and knowledge of — some of these records even without a warrant. That’s because Stone, in an apparent effort to undermine Mueller’s case, has been slowly leaking them to the press, accelerating last November.

Of those listed here, for example, after Bannon leaked the October 4 email set to the NYT and WaPo, Stone responded with a piece under his own name acknowledging those emails.

I had been told this would come in October for months by my source Randy Credico, whom I identified for the House Intelligence Committee.

[snip]

When Bannon’s minion Matt Boyle asked me if what Assange had was “good” I replied it was, based on Credico’s insistence the material was “devastating,” “bombshell” and would “change the race.” This turned out to be right, although — as I have testified — I never knew the content or source of the Wikileaks disclosures in advance.

As for the August 2016 texts with Randy Credico, some days later, Stone leaked them to the Daily Caller, again, using his own name.

Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary,” Randy Credico wrote to Stone on Aug. 27, 2016, according to text messages that Stone provided to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Mueller didn’t need a warrant to obtain the evidence to convict Roger Stone. He has the Daily Caller for that!!

Which raises the question why — other than sloppiness, hubris, or declining rat-fucking skills — Stone went to the trouble of lying to HPSCI if he didn’t, at the same time, delete all records of his election year rat-fuckery, which might have minimized the charges he is facing today.

Stone chose to keep these records, even (apparently, though I don’t know that those came out other than in Corsi’s own leaked plea deal) the ones with Corsi that show he was lying about Credico. Stone chose to obstruct justice, but not to do so in a way that would destroy the evidence he was trying to hide.

One reason he may have wanted to do that was to keep leverage over Trump and people like Steve Bannon in his immediate circle.

Which may mean today’s raids found far more interesting evidence implicating Trump and others.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Things Not Said in Roger Stone’s Indictment: “Trump Directed” and Other More Damning Details

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I’m a leading purveyor of the theory that Robert Mueller is producing his mythical “report” via one after another speaking indictments. That said, it has always been true that some of the most interesting parts of his indictments involved what didn’t get said. That’s especially true in today’s Roger Stone indictment. Before I explain what didn’t get said, let me review what got said. The indictment shows that Stone was asked to figure out what emails on Hillary Julian Assange had, and using at least Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico as go-betweens, Stone did so, providing information (most explicitly) to Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon. When Congress asked Stone about all this, he lied, first hiding any of his go-betweens, and then seemingly using Randy Credico to hide Jerome Corsi. Mueller provides a lot of the communications between Stone and his go-betweens and the communications from October 2016, as well as some of the ones from the cover-up period.

But he doesn’t provide us everything.

I have argued that the early morning raid, not to mention the larding on of charges, suggest this is an effort to get Stone to flip, both against Jerome Corsi (which is why Meuller locked in testimony from Corsi’s stepson yesterday) and Trump himself.

With that in mind, here are the things that Mueller doesn’t say.

With whom — besides Campaign Manager Steve Bannon — at the Trump Campaign did Roger Stone speak

The word “campaign” shows up 52 times in Stone’s indictment, of which (by my count) 7 are generic references, 16 are to Hillary’s campaign or a descriptor for John Podesta, and 29 are to Trump’s campaign or associates of it. The indictment describes Stone’s discussions with people on the campaign over and over. While a number of those are to identified individuals — most notably Steve Bannon — a number of those are generic, including the following references.

During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1.

[snip]

STONE also continued to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign about Organization 1 and its intended future releases.

[snip]

By in or around June and July 2016, STONE informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had information indicating Organization 1 had documents whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.

[snip]

STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.

It does so in an indictment that alleges (correctly, obviously) that one of Stone’s lies to the House Intelligence Committee that was material was whom he was speaking with on the campaign. The description of that lie cites the October 4 Bannon communication and the “supporter.” But it still leaves who else he spoke with unstated.

STONE’s False and Misleading Testimony About Communications with the Trump Campaign

35. During his HPSCI testimony, STONE was asked, “did you discuss your conversations with the intermediary with anyone involved in the Trump campaign?” STONE falsely and misleadingly answered, “I did not.” In truth and in fact, and as described above, STONE spoke to multiple individuals involved in the Trump Campaign about what he claimed to have learned from his intermediary to Organization 1, including the following:

a. On multiple occasions, STONE told senior Trump Campaign officials about materials possessed by Organization 1 and the timing of future releases.

And, of course, there’s this reference, which uses the word “directed” exactly a week after BuzzFeed got pilloried for using it about Trump.

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.

Mind you, this indictment had to have been approved in advance by Big Dick Toilet Salesman Matt Whitaker, and the last time he permitted prosecutors to name Individual-1 in an indictment, he got chewed out for it.

So maybe Mueller is not saying who else on the Trump campaign Stone was talking to (though we know he had frequent calls with Trump all through the campaign) to hide what else he knows. Maybe the Big Dick Toilet Salesman wouldn’t let Mueller lay this out (though I doubt that’s the case). Or maybe Mueller is just trying to avoid a second week in a row featuring headlines about what Trump “directed” his associates to do as part of the Russian conspiracy.

Corsi’s (and possibly Credico’s) role in the conspiracy

As I noted above, Mueller got aggressive with Stone to get him to flip on others. Obviously, the big prize is Trump. But there’s space for Stone to take his revenge on Jerome Corsi (and possibly even Randy Credico).

I suspect that Credico is not in any danger here. That said, he is described as a potential co-conspirator, Person 2, and did clearly discuss a conspiracy to obstruct HPSCI’s investigation. “‘Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan’ . . . Richard Nixon,” Stone wrote as he tried to persuade Credico not to testify to HPSCI.

There’s just one detail that makes me wonder if Credico was not fully truthful with Mueller. When Credico discussed Stone’s September request that he ask Assange about emails pertaining to Hillary’s efforts to undermine a Libyan peace effort with WSJ last year, he denied he had sent the request to either Assange or his lawyer Margaret Kunstler.

“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30–particularly on August 20, 2011,” Mr. Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio personality who had interviewed Mr. Assange several weeks earlier. Mr. Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump, had no formal role in his campaign at the time.

Mr. Credico initially responded to Mr. Stone that what he was requesting would be on WikiLeaks’ website if it existed, according to an email reviewed by the Journal. Mr. Stone, the emails show, replied: “Why do we assume WikiLeaks has released everything they have ???”

In another email, Mr. Credico then asked Mr. Stone to give him a “little bit of time,” saying he thought Mr. Assange might appear on his radio show the next day. A few hours later, Mr. Credico wrote: “That batch probably coming out in the next drop…I can’t ask them favors every other day .I asked one of his lawyers…they have major legal headaches riggt now..relax.”

Mr. Credico said in an interview with the Journal that he never passed the message on to Mr. Assange or his lawyers, but “got tired” of Mr. Stone “bothering” him, and so told Mr. Stone he had passed along the message.

The indictment says he in fact did forward the request to Kunstler.

On or about September 20, 2016, Person 2 forwarded the request to a friend who was an attorney with the ability to contact the head of Organization 1. Person 2 blind-copied STONE on the forwarded email.

That said, the indictment clearly remains silent about a lot of the details Mueller has incriminating Corsi in a cover-up (who, remember, prosecutors threatened to charge in a conspiracy to suborn perjury with respect to Stone’s testimony, and whose stepson Mueller locked into testimony before this indictment). The indictment includes this reference to a November discussion between Stone and Corsi.

On or about November 30, 2017, STONE asked Person 1 to write publicly about Person 2. Person 1 responded, “Are you sure you want to make something out of this now? Why not wait to see what [Person 2] does. You may be defending yourself too much—raising new questions that will fuel new inquiries. This may be a time to say less, not more.” STONE responded by telling Person 1 that Person 2 “will take the 5th—but let’s hold a day.”

But it remains silent on the report that Stone asked Corsi to write in August 2016 to establish a cover story, and it remains silent on whether Stone paid Corsi hush payments to stay silent after that.

Farage and Malloch and any other go-betweens

The indictment names Ted Malloch, though not as a co-conspirator.

On or about the same day, Person 1 forwarded STONE’s email to an associate who lived in the United Kingdom and was a supporter of the Trump Campaign.

[snip]

The body of the email read in part that Person 1’s associate in the United Kingdom “should see [the head of Organization 1].”

It doesn’t, however, put the Malloch references into context.

For example, it doesn’t reveal that — around the time someone “was directed” to get Stone to find out what WikiLeaks had — Stone and Alex Jones met with Nigel Farage at the RNC, which ultimately led to Farage joining Trump at a campaign event.

One night during the convention, Farage was introduced to Trump’s longtime adviser, the infamous political trickster, Roger Stone, at an Italian restaurant in The Flats district of Cleveland, according to both men.

Stone, who was accompanied that night by the Internet radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, said Farage’s main goal appeared to be to get a meeting with Trump.

The next day, Stone said, he tried to help by calling his former business partner, Paul Manafort – then Trump’s campaign chairman – and suggested that the Republican nominee get together with Farage. Manafort’s response was something along the lines of, “I’ll put a good word in,” Stone recalled.

Then, Stone met Ted Malloch — with Corsi — for dinner in NYC.

Asked about the nature of his relationship with Malloch, Stone said he did not know the other man well. He initially said he met Malloch three times but later said he recalled only two meetings with him.

Stone’s and Malloch’s first meeting was at a New York restaurant, Strip House, during the 2016 campaign. The two men dined with Jerome Corsi, a far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist, Stone said.

Stone said his conversation with Malloch and Corsi at dinner was friendly but not memorable, and that they discussed “Brexit and globalism.” He added that they never discussed WikiLeaks, Assange, or Russia.

Stone, at least, is very sketchy about the timing of this, though it may actually precede when Stone asks Corsi to reach out to Malloch (indeed, might be the very reason he thought Corsi could get to Assange via Malloch).

That led to Farage’s campaign appearance with Trump on August 23.

Note, too, that the Stone indictment actually doesn’t say that Corsi is the go-between that Stone was hiding when he instead claimed Credico was his link to Assange. Indeed, of that go-between, he says he had only phone contact (though as I’ll write in a follow-up, that may have been for other reasons).

Particularly given Stone’s move to begin setting up a cover-story in August 2016, I’m not yet convinced we know who Stone’s real go-between is (and I’m still fairly certain that he and possibly Corsi had actual Podesta emails by then). He could have been working with Malloch directly. Or it could be someone else entirely.

Whoever it is, nothing in the Stone indictment tells us that for sure.

The Assange pardon

The Stone indictment is also silent about something that they have evidence — in the form of texts between Credico and Stone, surely among other things — that Stone tried to get Assange a pardon early last year.

In early January, Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and adviser to Donald Trump, sent a text message to an associate stating that he was actively seeking a presidential pardon for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—and felt optimistic about his chances. “I am working with others to get JA a blanket pardon,” Stone wrote, in a January 6 exchange of text messages obtained by Mother Jones. “It’s very real and very possible. Don’t fuck it up.” Thirty-five minutes later, Stone added, “Something very big about to go down.”

The recipient of the messages was Randy Credico, a New York-based comedian and left-leaning political activist whom Stone has identified as his back channel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign—a claim Credico strongly denies. During the election, Stone, a political provocateur who got his start working for Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, made statements that suggested he had knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to publish emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and other Democrats, and his interactions with WikiLeaks have become an intense focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian election interference. As Mueller’s team zeroes in on Stone, they have examined his push for an Assange pardon—which could be seen as an attempt to interfere with the Russia probe—and have questioned at least one of Stone’s associates about the effort.

Particularly given that any pardon would have had to involve the one guy in the United States who can pardon Assange, it seems relevant to Mueller’s investigation. And yet it doesn’t show up in this indictment.

That’s something, then, that Stone could walk Mueller through as an effort to get rid of the 20-year witness tampering charge he faces.

Russia

Finally, the indictment remains mostly silent about Russia, particularly Roger Stone’s 180-turn on August 1 to claim that Russia may not have been behind the hack of the DNC. That’s all the more interesting given the way the indictment lays out the attribution to Russia made in mid-June.

On or about June 14, 2016, the DNC—through Company 1—publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors.

And then included Stone’s denial that Russia had hacked the DNC in his statement before HPSCI.

“These hearings are largely based on a yet unproven allegation that the Russian state is responsible for the hacking of the DNC and [the Clinton Campaign chairman] and the transfer of that information to [Organization 1].”

The indictment makes these two nods to attribution even as (as a number of people have observed) in their motion to seal Stone’s indictment, prosecutors deemed Stone’s indictment to be related to the GRU indictment, and his docket includes one of the DC AUSAs also on the Internet Research Agency case, Jonathan Kravis. (I’ve updated my running docket of Mueller and potentially related cases here.)

Remember, the GRU indictment describes (but doesn’t charge) Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0.

On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who wasin regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank u for writing back . . . do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?” On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if i can help u anyhow . . . it would be a great pleasure to me.” On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, “[p]retty standard.”

So prosecutors are saying that Stone’s crimes are more closely related to the actual Russian hack (which, remember, continued into September, after Stone deemed the DCCC analytics Guccifer 2.0 released to be “standard”) than they are to Flynn or Manafort or Papadopoulos or anyone else’s indictments.

Mind you, WikiLeaks appears as an unindicted co-conspirator in both the Stone and the GRU indictments, which may explain the connection.

But for some reason, Mueller thinks it important to note in Stone’s indictment that he pretended to believe Russia didn’t hack the DNC long after the hack had been attributed, without ever once mentioning that he had also spoken with the GRU persona dumping files.

Update: I’ve taken out the reference to Sam Nunberg, who says he’s not the person listed in this indictment.

Update: I’ve corrected this to reflect it was Jerome Corsi’s stepson who appeared before the grand jury Thursday. h/t AK

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

Reading Roger’s Indictment

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This post will provide a guide to reading Roger Stone’s indictment, to highlight what was unknown from it, and what has long been known. I’ll do updates to talk about the pregnant silences in the indictment.

Organization 1: WikiLeaks

Person 1: Jerome Corsi

Person 2: Randy Credico

Senior Trump Campaign official (¶12): Unknown — my wildarseguess is Rick Gates

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.

Corsi’s associate (¶13a, ¶13b): Ted Malloch

Attorney with ability to contact Assange (¶15dii): Margaret Kunstler

A supporter involved with the Trump Campaign (¶16a, ¶16d): Unknown

High-ranking Trump campaign official (¶16b, ¶16c): Steven Bannon

A reporter who had connections to a high-ranking Trump Campaign official (¶16b): Matthew Boyle

Associate of high-ranking Trump campaign official (¶17): Unknown

Person 2’s dog (¶39b): Credico’s therapy dog Bianca, who attended his grand jury appearance with him

September 18 request for information (¶15d): Stone was looking for details on Hillary’s attempts to thwart a Libyan peace deal

Update: I’ve taken out a reference to Sam Nunberg, who has said he’s not the one named in this indictment.

Mueller Plays Hardball with Roger Stone

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Roger Stone was indicted and arrested in a raid on his home this morning.

There’s very little that we didn’t already know, at least in outline form: he was indicted because he lied to HPSCI about Jerome Corsi being his source for early WikiLeaks information rather than Randy Credico and then pressured Credico to sustain that claim for him. The sexiest detail about that is that he told Credico he should do a Frank Pentangeli, meaning he should claim not to know what he did.

On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 that Person 2 should do a “Frank Pentangeli” before HPSCI in order to avoid contradicting STONE’s testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know.

The most important detail — by far — in the indictment reveals that a senior Trump Campaign official “was directed” to contact Stone about what else was coming from WikiLeaks.

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.

I suspect that the senior Trump Campaign official was Rick Gates, though that’s a guess (Bannon is the very senior official named later in the indictment). The indictment doesn’t say, “directed by whom.”

And that, I think, is why Stone was arrested before dawn rather than permitted to self report, and why Stone was charged with obstruction plus five counts of false statements plus witness tampering (the latter of which carries real time, particularly given  Stone’s physical threats to Credico’s dog Bianca).

This is an effort to get Stone to reveal who that “whom” was, and whatever follow-up contacts he had with that “whom.”

The indictment also doesn’t charge Jerome Corsi, nor does it describe Stone asking Corsi to write a cover story for him back in August 2016. That may mean that Mueller now wants Stone to incriminate Corsi.

The indictment comes before Mueller obtains Andrew Miller’s testimony, which Miller himself has suggested might include interesting information about campaign finance.

But for now, this looks like an indictment and a delivery of it designed to strong arm Stone. I’m not sure that’s going to work with Stone.

Update: Two other key details.

First, the Big Dick Toilet Salesman let Bobby Three Sticks arrest Roger Stone. That’s got to make Trump … uncomfortable about his cover-up plans.

Also, remember that Paul Manafort is due in court today, to find out whether he’ll do life for lying while he was supposed to be cooperating. If Manafort lied to protect Stone (and that’s an area of his cooperation about which Mueller was curiously silent), this may get his attention.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.