Stone Indictment Details Apparent Ties to Wikileaks, Assange
A SEVEN-COUNT indictment filed in federal court Friday against Trump confidante Roger Stone describes a series of covert actions across two continents to upend Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign – apparently in partnership with the head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, as well as a political pundit and a radio host.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the election as well as possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Moscow, charged Stone with witness tampering, obstruction of an official proceeding and lying to federal investigators.
The indictment largely draws from a series of text messages, emails and other documents. Like the other documents Mueller's team has filed, the Stone indictment is vague in spelling out connections to President Donald Trump and his campaign, mostly laying out Stone's knowledge of a scheme by which a tranche of emails stolen from the Clinton campaign were made public and his subsequent lies about what he knew.
Neither Assange nor Wikileaks is identified by name in the 23-page document, but its descriptions of the website and its dyspeptic editor – himself a vocal critic of Clinton – leave little room for doubt. It describes "Organization 1" as an outfit that "had previously posted documents stolen by others from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government, released tens of thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and the personal email account of the chairman of the U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton," and that it is led by an individual who was "located at all relevant times at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London."
Assange hasn't left the embassy since 2012, when he sought refuge there after being indicted by authorities in Sweden and the United States.