Newly revealed calls between President Trump and Roger Stone dovetailed with key developments in the theft of Democratic emails, prosecutors said.
WASHINGTON — President Trump was more personally involved in his campaign’s effort to obtain Democratic emails stolen by Russian operatives in 2016 than was previously known, phone records introduced in federal court on Wednesday suggested.
Federal prosecutors disclosed the calls at the start of the criminal trial of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime friend, who faces charges of lying to federal investigators about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Russian intelligence officers had funneled tens of thousands of emails they stole from Democratic computers to WikiLeaks, which released them at critical points during the presidential race.
The records suggest that Mr. Trump spoke to Mr. Stone repeatedly during the summer of 2016, at a time when Mr. Stone was aggressively seeking to obtain the stolen emails from Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The prosecutors noted that they did not know what Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump had discussed. But they stressed that the timing of their calls dovetailed with other key developments related to the theft and release of the Democratic emails.
View the complete November 6 article by Sharon LaFraniere on The New York Times website here.
Prosecutors fired their opening salvo Wednesday in the trial of Roger Stone, tying the combative political consultant directly to President Trump by revealing a series of 2016 phone calls that they said showed Stone later lied to Congress “because the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.”
New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
As the Justice Department charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, we speak to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In 1971, he was charged with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications. At the time, Ellsberg faced over 100 years in prison. He tells Democracy Now!, “There hasn’t actually been such a significant attack on the freedom of the press … since my case in 1971.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a far cry from “I love WikiLeaks!”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Thursday in London on behalf of authorities in the U.S. who charged him in the release of classified information from Chelsea Manning.
