It’s in the WSJ, and they spend about half the article furiously spinning to downplay it, but this seems like a major revelation:
Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone privately sought information he considered damaging to Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
[…..]
In a Sept. 18, 2016, message, Mr. Stone urged an acquaintance who knew Mr. Assange to ask the WikiLeaks founder for emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s alleged role in disrupting a purported Libyan peace deal in 2011 when she was secretary of state, referring to her by her initials.
“Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30--particularly on August 20, 2011,” [Stone wrote to an assumed Assange intermediary].
This is directly from Stone’s email — and no one’s denying that it happened. There are denials that any information was passed, but the outreach seems incontrovertible and also extraordinarily specific. Stone also lied to Congress by withholding this email (not that House Judiciary will do anything, but).
My question, for lawyers out there: what crimes are implicated here? In particular, is this potentially solicitation of stolen goods? The emails were hacked, any reasonable person should have known they weren’t obtained lawfully, and Stone is requesting them explicitly.
Either way, though, it just got a lot harder for TrumpCo to claim that they were just innocent victims of fortune when it came to Clinton’s hacked emails. Not if they were reaching out and asking for them!