Ex-prez campaign adviser: Indictment shows ‘no evidence of collaboration’
Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, embroiled in the Russian probe, said the timing of the latest indictments in the case won’t derail tomorrow’s summit with Vladimir Putin.
“It was all part of a strategy to induce the president to cancel his meeting,” Stone told the Herald yesterday. “The meeting is going to happen, as far as I can tell.”
Stone said Trump is “his own man” and “makes his own decisions ... and won’t be bludgeoned by Democrats or anybody else.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — the Bay State’s senior senator seen as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 — called on Trump in a tweet yesterday to get his “butt on a plane” back home and to call off the Finland summit.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday the meeting is still on.
As for Stone, he said Friday’s indictment of 12 Russian military officers accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election shows “no evidence of collaboration or collusion” on his part.
He said, in a statement he shared with the Herald yesterday, that his exchange with Guccifer 2.0 — an alleged social media front for the hacking Russians — was a “benign” afterthe-fact exchange.
“As I testified before the House Intelligence Committee under oath, my 24 words with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 is benign based on it content, context and timing,” the statement reads. “This exchange is entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails.”
Stone, in the statement, said that exchange took place “many weeks” after special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments allege the hackers turned their attention to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“The indictment does not allege or even allude that I was part of this alleged hacking nor does it allege or allude to me having anything to do with getting the allegedly hacked material to WikiLeaks,” Stone adds in the statement.
Stone declined to comment further on the matter yesterday.
Twitter did dump Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks from its servers late yesterday, a day after Mueller’s indictments.
The indictment does say Guccifer 2.0 reached out to someone in contact with the Trump campaign about the “docs I posted” — Stone said on CNN that “I think I probably am the person referred to.”
Yet, in his statement, he adds the indictment shows “I did not conspire” with any hackers.”