[“The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth
looked bad for Donald Trump.”] [[link removed]]

STONE TRIAL: TRUMP MAY HAVE LIED TO ROBERT MUELLER  
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Dan Friedman and David Corn
November 6, 2019
Mother Jones
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_ “The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked
bad for Donald Trump.” _

Roger Stone and his wife Nydia arrive at Federal Court for the second
day of jury selection for his federal trial on Wednesday, Nov. 6,
2019, Cliff Owen/AP Photo

 

Roger Stone is on trial, and the proceedings are bad news
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President Donald Trump, with federal prosecutors citing evidence that
suggests Trump might have lied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And
that sort of lying can be a crime.

The trial kicked off on Wednesday at a federal courthouse in
Washington, DC, with a bit of a circus atmosphere. The neo-fascist
Proud Boys were there, as well as other luminaries of the alt-right,
to support Stone, the dirty trickster and conspiracy theorist who has
been a Trump adviser since the 1980s. Facing seven felony counts,
Stone is charged with lying repeatedly to the House Intelligence
Committee, obstructing justice, and witness tampering. But this case
goes beyond Stone’s alleged lies: prosecutors have revealed new
information about how Trump tried to benefit from the Russian
operation during the 2016 campaign that hacked the Democratic National
Committee’s servers. And they are producing material undercutting
Trump’s claim
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he has no recollection of talking to Stone during the campaign about
WikiLeaks. This information also presents a new wrinkle in the
Trump-Russia scandal: Trump might have thought in 2016 that his
campaign, in effect, was colluding with WikiLeaks. That’s because
the campaign was communicating with Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans and
intentions and campaign officials (and perhaps Trump) believed Stone
was in contact with WikiLeaks. 

“The evidence in this case will show that Roger Stone lied to the
House Intelligence Committee because the truth looked bad,” lead
prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky said in his opening statement on Wednesday.
“The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked
bad for Donald Trump.”

One of the key points Mueller investigated was whether the Trump
campaign had interacted with WikiLeaks or Russian intermediaries in
2016 when Moscow was using WikiLeaks for its operation to subvert the
US presidential campaign (which was mounted in part to help Trump
win). Trump refused to be questioned in person by Mueller and his
investigators. Instead, he agreed to answer written questions on a
limited number of subjects. Several of the queries Mueller submitted
to Trump focused on whether he was ever told Stone had been in touch
with WikiLeaks and whether he or anyone associated with his campaign
had spoken to Stone about WikiLeaks. In his written response, Trump
replied, “I do not recall being told during the campaign that Roger
Stone or anyone associated with my campaign had discussions with any
of the entities named in the question regarding the content or timing
of release of hacked emails.” He also noted, “I do not recall
discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr.
Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my
campaign.” And Trump, who has boasted of possessing a prodigious
memory, claimed to have “no recollection of the specifics of any
conversations I had with Mr. Stone between June 1, 2016” and
Election Day. The impression Trump provided: as far as he knew, he and
his campaign had had nothing to do with Stone and WikiLeaks.

Mueller’s report characterized Trump’s responses as
“inadequate.” Zelinsky’s opening statement suggests Stone’s
trial could show Trump’s statements were false. 

On June 14, 2016, the _Washington Pos_t reported
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the DNC had been hacked by Russia. On that same day, Zelinsky said,
Stone, an unofficial campaign adviser, spoke by phone with Trump.
Zelinsky also cited another suspicious call. This occurred on July 31,
2016—not too long after WikiLeaks had at the start of the
Democrats’ convention released thousands of DNC emails and documents
stolen by the Russians. Stone phoned Trump and the two men spoke for
about 10 minutes. Prosecutors don’t know what the men discussed,
according to Zelinsky, but about an hour later, Stone emailed Jerome
Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who was helping Stone’s
efforts to attack Hillary Clinton. Stone instructed Corsi to travel to
London and “get to” Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who was
holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid arrest by British
authorities. 

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Corsi has since claimed that he did not speak to Assange or anyone
connected to WikiLeaks. Yet on August 2, Corsi emailed
[[link removed]] Stone,
“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after
I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.” The
next day, Stone emailed his former lobbying partner Paul Manafort, who
at this point was the Trump campaign’s chairman. Stone, according to
Zelinsky, told Manafort he had an idea “to save Trump’s ass,”
and he asked Manafort to call him.

Stone later emailed Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, who joined the
Trump campaign after Manafort’s mid-August ouster, and asserted that
time was running out for Trump to salvage his candidacy. Stone said in
this message, sent on August 18, that he knew how to win the election
“but it ain’t pretty.” Bannon wrote back, in part: Let’s talk
ASAP.” Zelinsky told the court that Bannon will testify that he and
Stone “had been talking all summer long” about WikiLeaks and that
Stone had told Bannon what he had been claiming publicly: that he had
inside information on WikiLeaks. (Stone now insists he had been lying
and possessed no inside connection to WikiLeaks.) In October 2016,
when Assange gave a bizarre press conference widely seen as a dud
because he did not disclose new material on Hillary Clinton, Bannon
immediately emailed Stone to ask, “What was that?” Stone assured
Bannon that Assange still planned to release additional emails. And
days later, WikiLeaks began releasing messages the Russians had swiped
from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. Trump touted those releases
extensively in the final weeks of campaign, declaring, “I love
WikiLeaks.”

The story that Zelinsky began telling at the start of the trial raised
the possibility (or probability) that Trump and his campaign did
interact with Stone regarding the WikiLeaks releases of stolen
Democratic documents—and that they considered Stone a backchannel to
Assange and his organization. (It remains an open question whether
Stone had indeed obtained inside information on WikiLeak’s plans.
Stone’s lawyers argued Wednesday that he only was sharing
information that was already public.) Yet Trump told Mueller he had no
memory of him or anyone else connected to his campaign communicating
with Stone about WikiLeaks. That seems hard to believe. Lying to
Mueller could be a crime—similar to the crime that Stone has been
charged with. And though Mueller noted in his final report that a
sitting president cannot be prosecuted on a federal charge, he did
indicate that a president could be prosecuted once he or she leaves
office. 

The Stone trial is expected to last several days, and it may well
continue to produce information that, as Zelinsky said, looks “bad
for Donald Trump.” 

_Dan Friedman is a reporter in Mother Jones' DC bureau. Reach him
at [email protected]
[[link removed]]._

_David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief and an on-air
analyst for MSNBC. He is the co-author (with Michael Isikoff)
of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and
the Election of Donald Trump. He is the author of three New York Times
bestsellers, Showdown, Hubris (with Isikoff), and The Lies of
George W. Bush, as well as the e-book, 47 Percent: Uncovering the
Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. For more of his
stories, click here [[link removed]].
He's also on Twitter
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