WIKILEAKS2

2/19

includes assange

===

see rohrabacher secret deal bribe

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Steve Bannon says Roger Stone was Trump campaign’s link to WikiLeaks | PBS News

no lnx

Bannon says Roger Stone was Trump campaign’s link to WikiLeaks

:{Politics Nov 8, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign viewed Roger Stone as an “access point” to WikiLeaks and tried to use him to get advanced word about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton, a former top presidential adviser testified Friday.

In reluctant testimony, former campaign CEO Steve Bannon told a federal court that Stone, on trial for lying to Congress and witness tampering, had boasted about his ties to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, alerting them to pending new batches of damaging emails.

“The campaign had no official access to WikiLeaks or to Julian Assange,” Bannon told the court. “But Roger would be considered if we needed an access point.”

While Stone repeatedly “implied that he had a connection with WikiLeaks,” he never stated it directly, Bannon said.

It was the first time that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign acknowledged in court that they had actively sought material from WikiLeaks, which released emails that U.S. intelligence agencies determined had been hacked by the Russian government in order to damage Clinton.

The White House had no immediate comment.

Stone, a colorful political operative and Trump ally, is charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his attempts to contacts WikiLeaks about the damaging material during the 2016 presidential campaign.

While Stone repeatedly “implied that he had a connection with WikiLeaks,” he never stated it directly, Bannon said.

The campaign took Stone’s boasts seriously enough to follow up, asking why expected information about Clinton wasn’t revealed when Assange held a press conference in October 2016.

Bannon, who testified in response to a subpoena, did not say anything about Trump and said Stone had not been sent by anyone on the campaign to talk to Assange.

Earlier this week, a former FBI agent testified about a flurry of phone calls between Stone and then-candidate Trump — including three calls on July 14, 2016 — the day that a massive hack of the Democratic National Committee’s servers was reported. But the agent said she did not know what was discussed on those calls.

As he left the courthouse, Bannon griped about being subpoenaed by prosecutors and Congress in addition to being interviewed several times by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“I was forced and compelled to come here today,” he said as he climbed into a waiting SUV outside the courthouse.

Bannon’s testimony came after comedian and radio talk show Randy Credico told jurors that Stone pressured him into backing up lies he told Congress, threatening to take away his dog at one point. Credico said Stone pressed him to “go along” with a false account of the operative’s contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

“He wanted me to go along with this narrative,” Credico said in his second day of testimony.

Stone called a Credico a “rat” and a “stoolie” in a threatening April 2018 email. Credico also testified that Stone used repeated references from the movie “The Godfather Part II” to intimidate him into either backing up Stone’s testimony to Congress or refusing to testify.

“My lawyers are dying to rip you to shreds. I’m going to take that dog away from you,” he said in the email, which Credico read aloud in court. And while Credico testified he considered the threat “hyperbole,” he also said that Stone “plays hardball” and “I did not want to rile the guy.”

The radio host told the court he’s had his dog Bianca, a small breed known as a coton de tulear, since 2006. “I have no wife, no kids, I’ve been around the dog for 12 years,” he said.

Credico has occasionally provoked laughter in court and warnings from the judge.

Thursday’s testimony detailed the acrimonious collapse of the relationship between the liberal Credico and Stone, a longtime conservative operative who revered Richard Nixon so much that he has the disgraced former president’s face tattooed on his back.

Credico and Stone met in 2002 through the campaign of a third-party candidate for New York governor. Despite their political differences, Stone was a regular guest on Credico’s radio show.

“He’s good on radio,” Credico said of Stone. “He’s a good guest to have on.”

Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and conservative operative who has a tattoo of former president Richard Nixon’s face on his back, is accused of telling Congress that Credico was the source of his inside information about WikiLeaks. But Credico said he and Stone never discussed WikiLeaks before late August 2016, making it impossible that he was the “trusted intermediary” that Stone had been referring to for months.

Credico did manage to contact Assange through mutual acquaintance Margaret Kunstler, and hosted Assange on his radio show on Aug. 25, 2016. He says Stone, who had already claimed in interviews to have a back-channel link to Assange, immediately started asking Credico to put him in touch with Assange.

Prosecutors have said Stone lied about his efforts to learn more about the WikiLeaks releases because the truth about his efforts would “look bad” for Trump.

In an often-testy cross examination, defense attorney Robert Buschel tried to paint Stone as the victim of a con job by Credico, saying that the radio host repeatedly lied to Stone to exaggerate his connection and influence with Assange.

They went through the pair’s text exchanges before Credico’s September 2016 trip to London. Credico wrote to Stone that a meeting with Assange, who was sheltering from prosecution in the Ecuadoran embassy, was “on the agenda.” In reality, there was no meeting planned and the closest Credico got to Assange was delivering a letter from his radio station’s administration to the embassy offering Assange a show on their channel.

Credico said Stone was pestering him with requests and that he led Stone to believe he was working on making contact with Assange “just to satisfy him and get him off my back.”

Stone’s trial is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.

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an 6 22

after Democratic aide Seth Rich was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, July 10, 2016, it didn’t take right-wing media outlets long to promote bogus conspiracy theories about his death. Police believe that Rich was the victim of a street robbery, but Fox News persisted in pushing conspiracy theories about his death — inspiring Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary Rich, to file a lawsuit against the right-wing cable news outlet. And a new interview with National Public Radio (NPR) is the first public interview they have granted since reaching a settlement with Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp. in 2020.

Joel Rich told NPR, "We're just beside ourselves. With all the international stories and all the national media, how do you live with that, when you know it's all false about your son and his legacy?"

Under the terms of the settlement they reached with Fox News/Fox Corp. in 2020, Joel and Mary Rich could not speak directly about Fox News or any of its hosts during the NPR interview. But they talked about their son and the pain that conspiracy theorists brought them after his death. [twt tpx]

"After Seth's death,” NPR reporter David Folkenflik explains, “figures friendly to former President Donald Trump portrayed him as a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter. They peddled false claims that he had secretly stolen thousands of e-mails and given them to WikiLeaks to try tostop Hillary Clinton from winning the presidency.They suggested Clinton and the Democrats had arranged his killing, and that the Riches themselves were in on some kind of cover-up. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fueled the suspicions, aided by such extremist blogs as Gateway Pundit. None of this was true.”

Folkenflik adds, “As intelligence agencies in the Obama and Trump Administrations, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee and Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded, hackers were deployed by the Russian government to disrupt U.S. elections. But the falsehoods [seth rich lie?] helped deflect growing evidence that the Russians had interfered in Trump's election win.”

Folkenflik notes thatSean Hannity, Eric Bolling and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs were among the hosts at Fox News or Fox Business who “baselessly suggested that Seth Rich had been the leaker and that he was murdered because of those leaks.”

Seth Rich’s death wasn’t the first time Fox News’ willingness to promote nonsense conspiracy theories created legal problems for them. Fox News is presently facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for promoting the false claim that its voting equipmentwas used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the 2020 presidential election. A civil trial in that case is set for April 2023.

Fox News has also been sued for defamation by Smartmatic, a Dominion competitor. Smartmatic’s voting equipment was never used to help Democrats steal any votes in 2020, but that didn’t prevent Fox News hosts from promoting that false claim just as it promoted false claims involving Dominion. And Smartmatic asked for $2.7 billion in its lawsuit.

Although Joel Rich couldn’t get into the specifics of the settlement with Fox News/Fox Corp., he told NPR, “We are still glad we did this, because you get a settlement. It may not have the words 'I'm sorry.' But (in effect), you have the admission they did something wrong.”

Fox News, not surprisingly, declined to be interviewed for NPR’s article on Joel and Mary Rich. During the interview, they reiterated that the ludicrous conspiracy theories involving their son had no basis in fact.

Mary Rich told NPR, “We thought that when the lawsuit was over, our lives would be able to go back (to a sense of normalcy)…. People would know and understand that there was a big lie. And I have realized since then, our lives will never ever be able to return.”

omfg

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/28/cia_julian_assange_assassination_plot

yahoo isikoff

did the CIAunder the Trump administration plan to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a shootout in London? That is one of the explosive findings in a new exposé by Yahoo News that details how the CIA considered abducting and possibly murdering Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden for rape allegations, charges that were dropped in 2017. More than 30 former officials say formerCIADirector Mike Pompeo was apparently motivated to get even with WikiLeaks following its publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools, which the agency considered “the largest data loss in CIA history.” Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, lays out the plans and describes how the abduction plan “was one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the entire Trump era,” noting it ultimately spurred the Justice Department to fast-track its legal case against Assange. We also speak with Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson, who says the latest revelations should alarm American citizens, as well as journalists around the world. “This is the CIA talking about conspiracy to kidnap and murder an Australian citizen and an award-winning journalist and editor who has done nothing but publish truthful information.”

case crumbles?

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/assange-extradition-cfaa-hacking/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/julian-assange-press-shows-little-interest-in-media-trial-of-century/

no lnx pix guk

Julian Assange: Press shows little interest in media ‘Trial of Century’

Alan MacLeod and FAIR September 26, 2020

Labeled the media "trial of the century," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition hearing is currently taking place in London—although you might not have heard if you're relying solely on corporate media for news. If extradited, Assange faces 175 years in a Colorado supermax prison, often described as a "black site" on US soil.

The United States government is asking Britain to send the Australian publisher to the US to face charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. He is accused of aiding and encouraging Chelsea Manning to hack a US government computer in order to publish hundreds of thousands of documents detailing American war crimes, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The extradition, widely viewed as politically motivated, has profound consequences for journalists worldwide, as the ruling could effectively criminalize the possession of leaked documents, which are an indispensable part of investigative reporting.

WikiLeaks has entered into partnership with five high-profile outlets around the world: the New York Times, Guardian (UK), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain). Yet those publications have provided relatively little coverage of the hearing.

Since the hearing began on September 7, the Times, for instance, has published only two bland news articles (9/7/20, 9/16/20)—one of them purely about the technical difficulties in the courtroom—along with a short rehosted AP video (9/7/20). There have been no editorials and no commentary on what the case means for journalism. The Times also appears to be distancing itself from Assange, with neither article noting that it was one of WikiLeaks' five major partners in leaking information that became known as the CableGate scandal.

Guardian: 'Politicising' and 'weaponising' are becoming rather convenient arguments

Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman (9/9/20) turned a reader's question about "liv[ing] in a time of so much insecurity" into a bizarre rant against Julian Assange and his partner, Stella Moris.

The Guardian, whose headquarters are less than two miles from the Old Bailey courthouse where Assange's hearing is being held, fared slightly better in terms of quantity, publishing eight articles since September 7. However, perhaps the most notable content came from columnist Hadley Freedman (9/9/20).

When asked in an advice article: "We live in a time of so much insecurity. But is there anything we can expect from this increasingly ominous-looking winter with any certainty?" she went on a bizarre tangential rant ridiculing the idea that Assange's trial could possibly be "politicized," also crassly brushing off the idea that his young children would never see their father again, and never answering anything like the question she was asked. Holding people to account "for a mess they could have avoided," she notes, "is not 'weaponizing' anything — it is just asking them to do their jobs properly." She also claimed that believing Assange's trial was politicized was as ridiculous as thinking antisemitism claims were cynically weaponized against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, which, she meant to suggest, was a preposterous idea. This was not an off-the-cuff remark transcribed and published, but a written piece that somehow made it past at least one editor.

Like the Times, the Guardian appeared to be hoping to let people forget the fact it built its worldwide brand off its partnership with WikiLeaks; it was only mentioned in a forthright op-ed by former Brazilian president Lula da Silva (9/21/20), an outlier piece.

The Guardian should be taking a particularly keen role in the affair, seeing that two of its journalists are alleged by WikiLeaks to have recklessly and knowingly disclosed the password to an encrypted file containing a quarter-million unredacted WikiLeaks documents, allowing anyone—including every security agency in the world—to see an unredacted iteration of the leak. In 2018, the Guardian also falsely reported that Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort had conducted a meeting with Assange and unnamed "Russians" at the Ecuadorian embassy (FAIR.org, 12/3/18). And, as former employee Jonathan Cook noted, the newspaper is continually being cited by the prosecution inside the courtroom.

Der Spiegel: Mögliche Höchststrafe: 175 Jahre Knast

Der Speigel's headline (9/7/20) reads: "Maximum Sentence: 175 Years in Prison."

There were only two articles in the English or French versions of Le Monde (9/7/20, 9/18/20) and only one in either of Der Spiegel's English or German websites (9/7/20), although the German paper did at least acknowledge its own partnership with Assange. There was no coverage of the hearings in El País, in English or Spanish, though there was a piece (9/10/20) about the US government thwarting a Spanish investigation into the CIA spying on Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London—accompanied by a photo of a protester against his extradition.

The rest of corporate media showed as little interest in covering a defining moment in press freedom. There was nothing at all from CNN. CBS's two articles (9/7/20, 9/22/20) were copied and pasted from news agencies AP and AFP, respectively. Meanwhile, the entire sum of MSNBC's coverage amounted to one unclear sentence in a mini news roundup article (9/18/20).

Virtually every relevant human rights and press freedom organization is sounding the alarm about the incendiary precedent this case sets for the media. The Columbia Journalism Review (4/18/19), Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation note that the government includes in its indictment regular journalistic procedures, such as protecting sources' names and using encrypted files—meaning that this "hacking" charge could easily be extended to other journalists. Trevor Timm, founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the court this week that if the US prosecutes Assange, every journalist who has possessed a secret file can be criminalized. Thus, it essentially gives a carte blanche to those in power to prosecute whomever they want, whenever they want, even foreigners living halfway around the world.

The United Nations has condemned his persecution, with Amnesty International describing the case as a "full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression." Virtually every story of national significance includes secret or leaked material; they could all be in jeopardy under this new prosecutorial theory.

President Donald Trump has continually fanned the flames, demonizing the media as the "enemy of the people." Already 26% of the country (including 43% of Republicans) believe the president should have the power to shut down outlets engaging in "bad behavior." A successful Assange prosecution could be the legal spark for future anti-journalistic actions.

Yet the case has been met with indifference from the corporate press. Even as their house is burning down, media are insisting it is just the Northern Lights.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/putins-favorite-congressman-offered-julian-assange-a-pardon-if-he-covered-up-russian-meddling-lawyers/

raw story

american prosecutors said this week that former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon from President Donald Trump if he agreed to help cover up Russia’s role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

*The Daily Beast* reports that witness Jennifer Robinson has testified that she attended a meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange in 2017 in which he made a direct quid-pro-quo offer.

Rohrabacher was joined in the meeting by Charles Johnson, a pro-Trump racist internet troll, and the two men led officials at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to believe they were acting on behalf of the president.

“They stated that President Trump was aware of and had approved of them coming to meet with Mr. Assange to discuss a proposal—and that they would have an audience with the president to discuss the matter on their return to Washington, D.C.,” Robinson said. the White House has denied that Trump was ever aware of such a scheme, however, and attorneys representing the U.S. government seemed to dispute Rohrabacher’s claims.

“After Robinson read her testimony in a London courtroom on Friday, lawyers representing the U.S. accepted the witness statement as accurate and confirmed they had no intention of cross-examining the claim,” The Daily Beast reports. “They did dispute, however, that President Donald Trump gave his blessing for the pardon offer.”

https://www.alternet.org/**2020/08/**this-is-what-collusion-looks-like-gop-led-senate-report-far-more-devastating-than-mueller-probe

lots of docs in twt not here

‘This is what collusion looks like’: GOP-led Senate report ‘far more devastating’ than Mueller probe

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 18, 2020

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on its bipartisan Russia investigation revealed even more numerous contacts between President Donald Trump’s advisers and Russian operatives than former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday released its fifth and final report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages,following a three-year bipartsian investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report documents the extent to which Russia sought to influence the election — and members of Trump’s team welcoming their assistance.

“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.

The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.

“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to theG.R.U.’s hack-and-leakoperation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”

The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)

While the Senate Russia report mentioned Kilimnik 819 times, the House Republican report did not mention him once. The Senate report also found that Kilimnik later “almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election.” Trump has repeatedly echoed the claim that Ukraine interfered in the election — not Russia.

Another part of the report also cited evidence raising the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operation, though the evidence was redacted.

The report described Trump’s former campaign chief as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” who worked with Russian operatives before and after the election.

The report also found thatTrump did discuss WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, even though he told Mueller’s team that he did “not recall” doing so. It also revealed that Stone directed an associate to request a leak of hacked emails by Clinton’s top aide when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. The emails were published a half hour after the release.

Like the Mueller report, the Senate report also detailed efforts by Trump and his team to impede the years-long probe.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the committee, urged the public to “review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and reach their own independent conclusions.”

Rubio, however, tried to spin the report as favorable for the president.

“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”

But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.

One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.

“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.

The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.

Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.

Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.

The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.

“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.

“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.

The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”

Trump Jr. participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya about obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.

The report concluded by warning that “what happened to the United States in 2016 should be an alarm bell.”

“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the president’s associates are amplifying those efforts,” the report said. “The Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” to the homeland.

wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

no lnx

National Security

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

Karoun Demirjian and

Ellen Nakashima

August 18, 2020

President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.

But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.

The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.

“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statementinstead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.

“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”

Five Democrat senators — including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”

The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”

The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.

“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”

Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony

Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.

Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.

The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.

At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.

“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.

“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”

The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”

The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.

Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.

The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.

The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”

The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.

After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.

Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.

sputnik no lnx

Snowden: Manning Preferred Principles to Freedom at Expense of Collaboration With US Authorities© AP Photo / Friso Gentsch/dpa

13.03.2020

by Lilia Dergacheva

Former military intel analyst Chelsea Manning was ordered to be released from federal detention a day after a suicide attempt in her cell, with a US district judge asserting that her confinement no longer serves its “coercive purpose".

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, whom Russia granted political asylum in 2013 to protect him from US-initiated espionage charges, has eloquently zeroed in on Chelsea Manning’s recent release from federal detention, saying the authorities “offered to let her out in exchange for collaboration, but she chose her principles instead.”

“The government cast Manning into a dungeon for resisting a scheme to make publishers of news subject to the Espionage Act", Snowden tweeted referencing whistleblower and former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning’s cooperation with WikiLeaks and her unconditional support for website founder Julian Assange, who is currently behind bars in a high-profile London prison.

US District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ordered Chelsea Manning released from detention on Thursday, a day after the ex-army contractor attempted to commit suicide.

As Trenga put it in his court order, Ms. Manning's appearance before the grand jury – the condition Manning had been slapped with to be released – “is no longer needed", which means “her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose". However, she is still obligated to pay fines worth $256,000.

Similarly, author and free speech advocate Nozomi Hayase has said that it is a "huge relief" to know that Manning has now been released from detention, however, "we must not forget that she should not have been imprisoned in the first place".

"The secrecy of the grand jury is a coercive procedure used by the state to go after whistleblowers and journalists who expose the government’s wrongdoings. This practice is a part of the US government’s war on the free press, going after WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Manning was incarcerated because of her principled stance of refusing to cooperate in the federal grand jury targeting WikiLeaks. She indicated that she would not betray her principles, and that she would rather starve to death than testify", says Hayase.

According to the author, even though the torture of Manning has ended, "she will carry devastating effects of psychological trauma that may be irreversible".

"The US government’s treatment of Manning shows that if Assange were to be extradited to the US, he would not only never receive a fair trial, but he would be tortured. We need to end this political battle and Assange needs to be immediately released. Both Manning and Assange have shown remarkable strength and integrity in their resistance. But they can’t do it alone, and they need our support. We can’t allow them to be driven to death, whether it is by suicide or murder. It is time for people to step up and work together to free these truth-tellers and bring justice", Hayase stressed.

Chelsea Manning was originally charged with 22 offences, including aiding the enemy, which could have seen her be handed a death sentence. Born Bradley Manning, she later transitioned to a woman, and was eventually acquitted of the most serious charge, having pleaded guilty to 10 offences, with her sentence subsequently commuted by President Obama to nearly seven years of confinement.

Two years after her 2017 release from the maximum-security Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Manning was jailed at an Alexandria, Virginia dentention centre for contempt of court after refusing to testify before a federal grand jury that has been probing WikiLeaks. Her new, almost a year-long confinement and snowballing "psychological torture", as the case has been referred to by UN expert Nils Melzer, have resulted in Manning's attempted suicide.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange, who is through his first round of February extradition hearings, faces up to 175 years in prison in the US where he is wanted on 18 counts of espionage-related crimes. All of the charges pertain to his role in publishing classified diplomatic cables which shed light on war crimes committed by US-led forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and US-occupied Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba.

The extradition hearings will resume on 18 May 2020, as soon as witness and expert testimony is presented by both sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak

The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began on Sunday, 28 November 2010^[1] when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. Dated between December 1966 and February 2010, the cables contain diplomatic analysis from world leaders, and the diplomats' assessment of host countries and their officials.^[2]

According to WikiLeaks, the 251,287 cables consist of 261,276,536 words, making Cablegate "the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain."^[3] Today, more recent leaks have surpassed that amount. On 30 July 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted for theft of the cables and violations of the Espionage Act, in a court martial proceeding, and sentenced to 35 years imprisonment. She was released on 17 May 2017, after 7 years total confinement, after her sentence had been commuted by President Barack Obama earlier that year.

Sequence of leaks

The first document, the so-called Reykjavik 13 cable, was released by WikiLeaks on 18 February 2010, and was followed by the release of State Department profiles of Icelandic politicians a month later.^[4] Later that year, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief, reached an agreement with media partners in Europe and the United States to publish the rest of the cables in redacted form, removing the names of sources and others in vulnerable positions. On 28 November, the first 220 cables were published under this agreement by El País (Spain), Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France), The Guardian (United Kingdom) and The New York Times (United States).^[5] WikiLeaks had planned to release the rest over several months, and as of 11 January 2011, 2,017 had been published.

The remaining cables were published in September 2011 after a series of events compromised the security of a WikiLeaks file containing the cables. This included WikiLeaks volunteers placing an encrypted file containing all WikiLeaks data online as "insurance" in July 2010, in case something happened to the organization.^[6] In February 2011 David Leigh of The Guardian published the encryption passphrase in a book; he had received it from Assange so he could access a copy of the Cablegate file, and believed the passphrase was a temporary one, unique to that file. In August 2011, German weekly Der Freitag published some of these details, enabling others to piece the information together and decrypt the Cablegate files. The cables were then available online, fully unredacted. In response, WikiLeaks decided on 1 September 2011 to publish all 251,287 unedited documents.^[7]

The publication of the cables was the third in a series of U.S. classified document "mega-leaks" distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. Over 130,000 of the cables are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled "confidential", around 15,000 have the higher classification "secret", and none are classified as "top secret" on the classification scale.^[5]

Reactions

Reactions to the leak in 2010 varied. Western governments expressed strong disapproval, while the material generated intense interest from the public and journalists. Some political leaders referred to Assange as a criminal, while blaming the U.S. Department of Defense for security lapses. Supporters of Assange referred to him in November 2010 as a key defender of free speech and freedom of the press.^[8]Reaction to the release in September 2011 of the unredacted cables attracted stronger criticism, and was condemned by the five newspapers that had first published the cables in redacted form in November 2010.^[9]

Background

Wikinews has news on this topic

show

In June 2010, the magazine Wired reported that the U.S. State Department and embassy personnel were concerned that Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, a United States Army soldier charged with the unauthorized download of classified material while stationed in Iraq, had leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks rejected the report as inaccurate: "Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect".^[10][11]

However, during that same month (June 2010), The Guardian had been offered "half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables", and Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian had contacted Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, to see if he would be interested in sharing the dissemination of the information.^[12]

Manning was suspected to have uploaded all that was obtained to WikiLeaks, which chose to release the material in stages so as to have the greatest possible impact.^[13]

According to The Guardian, all the diplomatic cables were marked "Sipdis", denoting "secret internet protocol distribution", which means they had been distributed via the closed U.S. SIPRNet, the U.S. Department of Defense's classified version of the civilian internet.^[14] More than three million U.S. government personnel and soldiers have access to this network.^[15]Documents marked "top secret" are not included in the system. Such a large quantity of secret information was available to a wide audience because, as The Guardian alleged, after the 11 September attacks an increased focus had been placed on sharing information since gaps in intra-governmental information sharing had been exposed.^[14] More specifically, the diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence communities would be able to do their jobs better with this easy access to analytic and operative information.^[14] A spokesman said that in the previous weeks and months additional measures had been taken to improve the security of the system and prevent leaks.^[14]

...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/newly-released-fbi-documents-reveal-extent-of-roger-stones-direct-communications-with-julian-assange-report/

veteran GOP operative and long-time Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in February for felonies that included witness tampering and lying to Congress, continues to vie for a presidential pardon. Meanwhile, FBI documents continue to offer insights on Stone’s past communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: according to FBI documents made public this week, Stone asserted in a 2017 direct message via Twitter that if prosecutors came for him, “I will bring down the entire house of cards.”

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that FBI documents show that Stone sent that message weeks after former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to head the Russia investigation. According to AP reporters Eric Tucker, Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo, the FBI records “reveal the extent of communications between Stone and Assange, whose anti-secrecy website published Democratic e-mails hacked by Russians during the 2016 presidential election, and underscore efforts by Trump allies to gain insight about the release of information they expected would embarrass Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.”

FBI records, according to AP, show that in a direct Twitter message sent inJune 2017, Stone “reassured Assange that the issue was ‘still nonsense’ and said, ‘As a journalist, it doesn’t matter where you get information — only that it is accurate and authentic.”

Stone, AP reports, mentioned a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for newspapers and magazines to publish the Pentagon Papers — documents about the Vietnam War that had been classified. The Trump ally, via Twitter, told Assange, “If the US government moves on you, I will bring down the entire house of cards. With the trumped-up sexual assault charges dropped, I don’t know of any crime you need to be pardoned for — best regards. R.”

Stone, in that message, appeared to be referring to the Swedish government’s sexual assault case against Assange, which was dropped.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/roger-stone-trial-congress-wikileaks-trump-politics

wASHINGTON — At the start of Roger Stone’s criminal trial Wednesday, a federal prosecutor told the jury that the case was “not about politics.”

Except it’s all about politics. Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, is charged with lying to Congress about trying to contact WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, during the 2016 campaign and communicate what he was learning to Trump’s campaign. To prove that, prosecutors spent the first day of the trial presenting evidence that Stone did try to contact WikiLeaks — and that he was, in fact, not only in touch with the campaign, but with Trump himself.

The jury saw emails, text messages, and call records documenting Stone’s communications with the campaign around the same time that he was in touch with two associates about tracking down emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee that were eventually released by WikiLeaks; the US intelligence community later concluded that Russian intelligence was involved in hacking the DNC and orchestrating the release of the stolen emails through WikiLeaks.

The jury saw records of phone calls between then-candidate Trump and Stone in 2016, including on June 14, 2016, when the DNC announced it had been hacked, and in the weeks that followed. Prosecutors made clear that they didn’t know what the two men discussed — they only had the call logs — but they placed those calls in the middle of a timeline of Stone’s alleged efforts to get messages to WikiLeaks and Assange.

“Evidence will show Roger Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee because the truth looked bad. The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump,” Assistant US Attorney Aaron Zelinsky told the jury.

The trial in the US District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to last at least two weeks. The courtroom was full on Wednesday, and a handful of demonstrators for and against Stone have shown up to the courthouse this week — on Wednesday, someone had set up a large, inflatable statue of Trump depicted as a rat outside one of the entrances. During a lunch break, Stone was joined by several far-right figures attending the trial, including Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Jack Posobiec.

The fact that Stone is on trial at all is also tied to politics. He was the last person charged by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office — a probe Trump has continued to try to undermine, months after it ended — and Stone has repeatedly, albeit unsuccessfully, tried to use the case as a vehicle to challenge the legitimacy of Mueller's and Congress’s investigations into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Stone’s lawyer Bruce Rogow tried to draw a distinction on Wednesday between the subject of Russian interference in the election and the role of WikiLeaks and Assange in releasing emails stolen from the DNC.

Rogow argued that the House Intelligence Committee had said the subject of its investigation was Russian interference, and made no explicit mention of WikiLeaks or Assange in announcing that investigation or in its communications with Stone about his voluntary testimony. He said the government was right that the jury would see texts, emails, and Stone’s testimony, but what also mattered was Stone’s intent when he gave information to Congress.

“What isn’t there for you to see is Mr. Stone’s state of mind,” Rogow said. He argued there was no evidence of “corrupt intent” by Stone, and disputed that there were ever any actual “intermediaries” between Stone and WikiLeaks — he argued Stone was being “played” by then-associates Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico.

Leading up to the trial, the judge rebuffed Stone’s challenges to the indictment as well as his efforts to use the trial as a forum to criticize the Russia investigation and push the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Russia wasn’t involved in hacking the DNC. In September, the judge denied Stone’s request to introduce evidence that WikiLeaks did not receive emails stolen from the DNC from Russia, and granted the government’s request to limit evidence or arguments about whether Russia did actually try to interfere in the election.

Stone is facing a seven-count indictment: one count of obstructing Congress, five counts of making false statements to Congress, and one count of witness tampering. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the tampering count and up to five years in prison for each of the other charges.

He’s charged with lying or giving misleading information to the House on a number of subjects, including: allegedly saying he didn't have any records of communications about the hacked DNC materials, when he did; saying that he hadn't directed associates to contact WikiLeaks, when he had; saying he only had one intermediary with WikiLeaks, when there were two, Credico and Corsi; and saying that he hadn't discussed his conversations with an intermediary about WikiLeaks with the Trump campaign, when he had.

Prosecutors on Wednesday showed the jury messages between Stone (who served as an unofficial adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign) and top campaign officials and key supporters, underscoring Stone’s efforts to influence the direction of the campaign. The jury saw an email Stone sent to Paul Manafort, then the Trump campaign chair, on Aug. 3, 2016, with the subject line “I have an idea” and the body text, “To save Trump’s ass.”

That email to Manafort was sent the day after Stone received a message from Corsi telling Stone that “word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” according to evidence introduced by the government on Wednesday.The jury saw an email that Stone had sent to Corsi the previous month telling him to “Get to Assange,” who was living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London at the time.

Later in August 2016, shortly after Stone messaged with Corsi about getting additional information from WikiLeaks, Stone told Steve Bannon, then the Trump campaign chair, in another email shown to the jury on Wednesday: “I do know how to win this but it ain’t pretty.”

The jury saw an email on Oct. 3, 2016, from Stone to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater who supported Trump’s campaign but wasn’t formally part of it. Stone told Prince that he “spoke to my friend in London last night” and that “the payload is still coming” — the same day that Stone was texting with Credico, who sent Stone selfies outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, an FBI case agent testified.

On Oct. 4, 2016, after Assange gave a much-anticipated press conference but didn’t release any new information from the DNC servers, the jury saw an email from Bannon to Stone asking what had happened. He replied that there were “security” concerns, but that there would be “a load every week going forward.”

Rogow argued that Stone’s communications with Bannon, Gates, and Prince only reflected their shared interest in Trump’s success and a “joint effort” to get Trump elected.

“That is not a crime. That’s a First Amendment right that people have,” Rogow said.

Stone is also accused of trying to convince Credico to lie to Congress about their communications, and of threatening him when he pushed back. Prosecutors alleged that in December 2017, as Credico faced a congressional subpoena to testify, Stone asked him to do a "Frank Pentangeli" — a reference to a character in The Godfather Part II who was cooperating with law enforcement but then gave false testimony before Congress after his brother was threatened.

Whether the jury could see became a source of contention between prosecutors and Stone’s lawyer. The government argued the jury needed to see the clip to fully understand the context of the message to Credico. Stone argued it would be prejudicial. The judge approved a compromise — that the government could read a description of the scene, but not show the film.

The jury also saw messages that the government described as Stone urging Credico to not cooperate with the Mueller investigation. “Waste of your time - tell him to go fuck himself,” Stone messaged Credico, who replied: “Who?” “Mueller,” Stone responded.

Credico is expected to testify.Anticipating attacks on Credico’s credibility, Zelinsky told the jury that Stone knew about some of Credico’s weaknesses — that he had struggled with alcohol and was “excitable” — and those made him a good person to “pin something on.” Zelinsky also tried to anticipate attacks on the credibility of another government witness, former deputy Trump campaign chair Rick Gates, noting that Gates would be testifying as part of a cooperation agreement; Gates took a plea deal after being charged in Mueller’s investigation. The testimony would be backed up by documents, however, Zelinsky said.

Steve Bannon at Roger Stone trial says Stone claimed ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com › local › legal-issues › 2019/11/08

2 days ago - President Trump's former strategist testifies against Roger Stone in federal court. ... “I know how to win, but it ain't pretty.” Asked what Bannon ...

no lnx

Bannon says Stone claimed contacts with WikiLeaks

Rachel Weiner,

Spencer S. Hsu and

Devlin Barrett

November 8, 2019 at 6:51 PM EST

President Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon testified against political consultant Roger Stone on Friday, telling a federal jury that he thought of Stone as the Trump campaign’s liaison to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Bannon, a high-profile figure in the Trump campaign and the early days of the Trump administration, told the jury he was appearing only because he had been subpoenaed.

While Bannon was one of the most anticipated witnesses at Stone’s trial for allegedly lying to Congress about his efforts in 2016 to contact WikiLeaks, he was also one of the briefest, spending less than an hour under direct examination by prosecutors.

His testimony bolstered the government’s allegations that Stone lied to the House committee investigating Russian election interference when he denied discussing with the Trump campaign WikiLeaks’ release of emails damaging to political rival Hillary Clinton.

“He had a relationship, or told me he had a relationship with WikiLeaks,” Bannon said. “It was something I think he would frequently mention.”

“I was led to believe he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and [its founder] Julian Assange,” Bannon testified, based on Stone’s public statements and conversations going back years.

Stone and Bannon had known each other for a long time before Bannon joined the Trump campaign in August 2016, and they spoke between a half-dozen and a dozen times between then and the November election, Bannon testified.

Bannon said he discussed WikiLeaks with Stone as Stone was trying to learn more about hacked emails that might tank Clinton’s election run. The emails were stolen by Russian agents and shared with WikiLeaks, which released them at critical points in the 2016 election cycle, according to prosecutors.

After releases in summer 2016, Stone emailed Bannon, writing that “Trump can still win, but time is running out,” according to a copy of the message shown to jurors. “I know how to win, but it ain’t pretty.”

Asked what Bannon understood Stone’s email to mean, Bannon noted Stone’s claimed WikiLeaks connection and said: “Roger is an expert in the tougher side of politics.When you’re this far behind, you’re going to have to use every tool in the tool box .?.?. opposition research, dirty tricks, the kind of things campaigns use when you need to make up some ground.”

At one point in October 2016, when an expected revelation from Assange about Clinton emails proved to be a dud, Bannon sent Stone an email asking, “What was that this morning???”

Bannon, smiling, said on the stand that he sent the message to ask why the much-hyped disclosures did not materialize and also as “a little bit of a heckle; It was twofold.”

Stone replied that Assange was afraid for his safety but would still end up releasing damaging documents every week.

On cross-examination by Stone’s lawyer Robert Buschel, Bannon conceded that Stone never claimed to him that he had advance access to the hacked emails.

Stone, 67, listened intently, as he has throughout the trial. A longtime confidant of Trump, he has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have said any misstatements he made to Congress were unintentional.

Earlier in the day, former radio show host Randy Credico described on the witness stand how Stone urged him not to talk to Congress about their election year conversations. Credico said Stone threatened to damage the career of a close friend and even take away his dog.

Stone is also accused of witness tampering for allegedly trying to thwart Credico’s testimony to Congress. Jurors have seen Stone’s words in texts and emails, but Credico described how he understood Stone’s increasingly angry messages.

Prosecutors say Stone lied to protect the president when questioned in 2017 about WikiLeaks and the campaign. To keep the committee from unraveling those lies, prosecutors have said, Stone needed Credico to keep quiet and resorted to threats to try to ensure that.

Credico said in court Friday that Stone influenced his decision not to testify before the committee. “A lot of people played a role,” he said, “Mr. Stone among them.”

Trial evidence shows Stone texted Credico in April 2018: “You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” Stone later added: “I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die.”

At one point, Stone texted Credico that he would “take that dog away from you,” according to trial evidence.

Credico said he was “sure” Stone knew how important histherapy dog Biancawas to him when he sent that message. But later when questioned by Stone’s defense lawyer, Credico said he never really feared for Bianca’s safety.

Credico said he was more concerned about jeopardizing the reputation of his friend Margaret Kuntsler, who did legal work for WikiLeaks and helped Credico land an Aug. 25, 2016, interview with Assange for his radio show. Once, on Stone’s behalf, Credico said he asked her for WikiLeaks’ help finding emails implicating Clinton in an incident in Libya. Kuntsler testified that she ignored the message, but Credico said Stone threatened to falsely name her as his “backchannel.”

Credico described Stone repeatedly asking him to “do a Frank Pentangeli,” referring to a character from “The Godfather: Part II” who is intimidated into saying at a Senate hearing that he cannot recall information he actually knows.

The defense has suggested that Stone was asking Credico to use his skills as a comic impressionist to imitate Pentangeli. Credico testified he understood the references as a direction to “throw .?.?. off the House Intelligence Committee.”

Credico told the jury that directive made no sense because “there’s a ton of photos and text messages. .?.?. If I did a Frank Pentangeli, I would look like a fool.” But Credico said he was worried that if he testified honestly, he might become the victim of “some kind of smear job” by Stone.

On cross-examination, Stone’s attorney painted Credico as a liar who made Stone believe he had a close connection to Assange. Credico readily admitted: “There were exaggerations, there were lies, there were rebuffs, yes.”

The defense tried to argue that Credico refused to testify before the House committee not because Stone threatened him but because of his own liberal political leanings.

“You did not want to be associated with the Donald Trump campaign?” Buschel asked.

“Absolutely. Would you?” Credico replied, adding later: “I did not want to be connected with Donald Trump at all.”

A conspiracy of hunches: Roger Stone trial set to start this week

Roger Stone trial: Day 1 of testimony

Key witness takes stand in Roger Stone trial

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/heres-why-roger-stones-upcoming-trial-could-deal-a-major-blow-to-trump-at-a-perilous-time/

no lnx

Here’s why Roger Stone’s upcoming trial could deal a major blow to Trump at a perilous time

Written by Alex Henderson October 31, 2019

The Ukraine scandal and the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump have been drawing so much media attention that previous Trump-related scandals haven’t been in the news as much — for example, the looming criminal trial of the president’s long-time associate and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone. But the U.S. Department of Justice hasn’t forgotten about Stone, who will appear in court beginning on Tuesday, November 5. And Stone, journalists David Corn and Dan Friedman report in Mother Jones, could still be problematic for Trump.

Stone is facing federal charges that include obstruction of justice and witness tampering. And when he goes to trial on November 5, Corn and Friedman note, he will also be “facing charges that he lied to Congress about his interactions with WikiLeaksduring the 2016 campaign as the organization was publicly disseminating Democratic material stolen by Russian hackers.”

Explaining what Stone’s trial could mean for Trump, they add: “Though the trial will determine whether Stone tried to bamboozle a congressional investigation, it could answer two bigger questions about the president: did Trump use or try to use Stone as a conduit to WikiLeaks, and did Trump lie to Special Counsel Robert Mueller? The former might not be illegal; the latter could be a crime.”

Earlier this year, Attorney General William Barr publicly released, in redacted form, former Special Counsel Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation — and most of the references to Stone in the report were redacted, Corn and Friedman point out, “because his trial was pending.” However, the journalists add that the Mueller Report “contains clues suggesting that the full story of Stone’s involvement in the Trump-Russia scandal goes beyond what’s publicly known — and that it implicates Trump.”

In 2016, Democratic e-mails were stolen by Russia hackers and given to WikiLeaks, which published them online — and Stone, in 2016, was in touch with both the Trump campaign and the Russian hacker known by the assumed identity Guccifer 2.0.

Corn and Friedman explain, “If Trump or his senior campaign aides thought Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks — whether or not he actually was — and they were receiving information from him related to WikiLeaks, that would mean they believed then that the Trump campaign had a back-channel contact to WikiLeaks as it participated in the Russian operation. Trump has long shouted there was ‘no collusion,’ but perhaps Trump thought at the time that he and his campaign were colluding. After all, a significant Trump adviser consorting with WikiLeaks at this point could be construed as some sort of collusion.”

And as journalist Marcy Wheeler argued on Sept. 6., pre-trial documents indicate that Trump was in closer contact with Stone in 2016 than he told Mueller during the Russia investigation. Trump told Mueller he spoke to Stone “from time to time during the campaign,” but the documents indicate that Trump “spoke to Stone a lot.”

Trump denied recalling any discussions with Stone on a number of fronts, saying: “I do not recalldiscussing WikiLeaks with him, nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign, although I was aware that WikiLeaks was the subject of media reporting and campaign-related discussion at the time.”

However, as Wheeler notes, the evidence for the Stone’s trial included seven different phone numbers for Trump — four for him personally and three for his assistants and bodyguard — suggesting they talked quite frequently. And though he didn’t charge the president for any lies, Mueller did indicate in his testimony to Congress that Trump’s answers to the special counsel were not all truthful. Stone’s trial could shed more light on this claim.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment strategy has clearly focused on the Ukraine scandal, largely leaving aside the Mueller Report. But as Corn and Friedman point out in their Mother Jones article, there is a connection between the two.

“In a way,” the Mother Jones journalists explain, “the Russia affair led to the Ukraine scandal, with Trump pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate — and prove — a nutty conspiracy theory that claimed Moscow did not hack the 2016 election.”

Stone’s trial, they add, will bring back memories of the Russia investigation at a time when the House will be weighing whether or not Trump’s Ukraine-related activities should result in articles of impeachment against him.

“This trial of a conniving Trump confidante who specializes in the political dark arts will be a reminder of the original scandal of the Trump Administration that has tainted and undermined his presidency,” Corn and Friedman report, “and it could add another big lie — and a possible crime — to Trump’s long record of wrongdoing.”

no lnx

When Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued the indictment against Roger Stone, a long-time ally of President Donald Trump, he filed it while noting that it was connected to another case: the indictment of Russians who hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign.

Stone has been charged with lying to Congress, tampering with a witness, and obstructing justice.

Stone’s lawyers objected to the assertion that the cases were connected, a motion that could have triggered the case to be assigned to a different judge. But on Friday, Mueller responded to the lawyers’ objections and revealed why the cases are connected:

In Netyksho, eleven Russian military officers are charged by indictment with, inter alia, conspiring to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

…

As alleged in the Netyksho indictment, in 2016, the Netyksho defendants stole documents from the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Clinton campaign chairman. Those defendants then released many of the stolen documents, including through a website maintained by Organization 1. In the course of investigating that activity, the government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release, as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release. Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1. Evidence obtained from those search warrants resulted in the allegations that the Netyksho defendants hacked and stole documents for release through intermediaries, including Organization 1, and that Stone lied to a congressional committee investigating, among other things, the activities of Organization 1 regarding those stolen documents.

Here, “Organization 1” refers to WikiLeaks, which published the stolen emails.

Mueller also argued that Stone’s actions are part of the same “alleged criminal event or transaction” as those at issue in Netyksho.

He explained that the “criminal conduct alleged in Netyksho was a central focus of the congressional investigation that the defendant is alleged to have obstructed, and therefore the activities underlying the crimes charged in that case are part of the same activities underlying the crimes charged in this case.”

Since Stone’s lies came up in the context of an investigation the Russian election interference and possible connections to the actions of Americans, the cases are linked.

“The defendant’s false statements did not arise in a vacuum,” the filing said.

Reporter Andrew Prokop noted that further discussion of the warrants in question was filed along with the documents, but it was under seal.