Over the weekend, the longtime Trump confidant tweeted that he had a “back channel” to WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign — only to later delete it.“[N]ever denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary,” Stone tweeted late Saturday night. The post was gone after almost 40 minutes... Over the weekend, the longtime Trump confidant tweeted that he had a “back channel” to WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign — only to later delete it.“[N]ever denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary,” Stone tweeted late Saturday night. The post was gone after almost 40 minutes... WikiLeaks took to Twitter, saying it was unaware of communications between Stone and the organization or Assange.Stone said on Twitter more than a week later that it would soon be Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s “time in the barrel.”The message proved prescient. In early October, WikiLeaks began posting Podesta’s emails online for public consumption... As Stone regularly touted WikiLeaks’ releases, the self-styled radical transparency organization once again said it had never communicated with Stone.
How CPAC Helped Launch Donald Trump’s Political Career
Trump didn’t wing it entirely. He shrewdly picked issues ― abortion, guns and Obamacare ― to appeal to the GOP base, earning standing ovations when he pledged his conservative orthodoxy on these matters. The crowd (at least the non-Ron Paul-supportive elements of it) ate it up, while out in the halls there was palpable buzz.
.. Trump almost didn’t make it to CPAC that year. The gay-conservative group GOProud, which was waging its own battles with conference organizers, initially invited him.
.. GOProud’s former chairman Chris Barron thought of the idea of getting Trump to attend. He reached out to Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime confidant, about the possibility. They collectively agreed to the idea... “When Trump walked into the building, it was like Michael Jackson coming out of a Japanese airport. There were throngs of people around him,” he added. “From the moment when he walked into the door, I knew this was different.”
.. “The mere fact of showing up ultimately makes you more acceptable, because being nice to people and talking to them beats the hell out of calling them names,”.. “Though he does both.”.. “Here’s a person who’s willing to expand the party, the movement. Him being accepting to gays … is one of the biggest reasons why I thought young conservatives would accept him,” she said.
Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates
Mr. Manafort is among at least three Trump campaign advisers whose possible links to Russia are under scrutiny. Two others are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.
.. The Times reported that Mr. Manafort’s name had surfaced in a secret ledger that showed he had been paid millions in undisclosed cash payments. The Associated Press has reported that his work for Ukraine included a secret lobbying effort in Washington aimed at influencing American news organizations and government officials.
.. Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, said in a speech in Florida last summer that he had communicated with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published the hacked Democratic emails. During the speech, Mr. Stone predicted further leaks of documents, a prediction that came true within weeks.
Stone ‘happy to cooperate’ with FBI on WikiLeaks, Russian hacking probes
Several months ago, Stone predicted an October surprise that would disrupt Clinton’s campaign and his recent Twitter posts suggested Podesta would soon be facing scandal, including an August update stating, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”
Speaking to reporters earlier this week on Clinton’s airplane, Podesta confirmed he’d spoken to the FBI on Sunday as it probed the criminal hack into his email and he leveled a charge that Stone had “advance knowledge” of the document leaks.
.. former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell said during a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign that several of the GOP nominee’s former staffers “may be in this more deeply and may have relationships with Russia, perhaps financial relationships or other relationships and they’re working on behalf of the Russians to get this material out and spread this around.”
.. last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and director of national intelligence James Clapper issued an unprecedented statement signaling with high confidence that the Russian government was trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election via cyber espionage.
.. “The way that DOJ works, once they start looking at something they don’t look at very narrow discrete questions when there are other related questions swirling around. They try to get the rest of the picture,” said Matthew Miller, a former Obama administration Justice Department spokesman. “It stands to reason,” he added, “they’d already be investigating the Trump campaign.”
.. “There’s no way they’d do that before the election,”
.. Stone said what’s out so far is just “small potatoes compared to what I’m told is coming.”