Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are asking witnesses whether President Donald Trump knew of the hacking of the Democrats’ emails before they were publicly released, NBC News reported Wednesday.
Mueller’s team also reportedly wants to determine whether Trump was involved in the release of the emails. At a campaign event not long before the emails were made public, Trump called on the Russians to hack his opponent Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Investigators are also inquiring about Trump confidante Roger Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Atlantic reported Tuesday that Stone and Assange were in communication in October 2016.
In August 2016, Stone tweeted that it would “soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel.” The Clinton campaign pointed to that tweet and Trump’s campaign rally comments as evidence that the Trump campaign knew the emails had been hacked before they were released.
CNN reported Wednesday that Mueller is also currently asking witnesses about Trump’s business dealings with Russia before he launched his presidential campaign.
Read NBC’s full report here.
Uh Ohhh…
F’'me? No…F’ YOU!
While I still think we’re in this for the long haul, it definitely seems like the investigation has shifted into another gear.
Sure sounded like it, if the timeline of the TT meeting / speech that week is truthful.
Plus, he publicly invited the Russians to hack the Dems
YOU get a conspiracy, and YOU get a conspiracy, and YOU get a conspiracy.
This is from the department of ‘bigly’.
The gist of this article tends to confirm my working observation of Mueller’s working theory of the case: that Putin picked Trump first and then organized his election interference conspiracy and intel operation. There is no attack on our elections without Trump and there is no Trump without the RU election interference conspiracy intel operation.
Also per NBC:
The sources of info for NBC are witnesses who have been questioned by Mueller or the grand jury. That means Mueller is asking the right people. If any of them lie, they go to jail. The other thing is that Mueller doesn’t have to rely solely on someone’s word, because he has emails, texts, voice mails and intel intercepts. So if he’s asking you a question, it’s a good bet that he already knows the answer. Rick Gates found that out the hard way earlier this month.
That Mueller is inquiring into Trump’s statement begging Russia to find ‘those missing HRC emails’ tells me that he is looking seriously at a conspiracy to violate election laws. That he’s also looking at Roger Stone underscores this point.
The Internet research agency indictments open the door wide to scrutinizing and indicting Roger Stone. Mueller established in that indictment that an individual or nominally private entity that is working in concert or under the direction of an arm of the Russian government is indistinguishable from the Russian government for the purposes of establishing the conspiracy to violate US election laws by way of a Russian intelligence operation. They are essentially agents and it follows a standard agency concept well known in common law. Roger Stone communicated with Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks. By the standard the Mueller established in that Internet Research Agency indictment, Roger Stone was communicating directly with the the arms of the Russian government.
I also think this gets to the information that Michael Flynn may have provided investigators. Flynn was nominally in charge of managing efforts to connect with hacking groups to find those missing emails that Trump expressly desired to have Russia find and use for his benefit. So if Mueller is asking other witnesses whether Trump new about the hacked emails in advance and sought to use them, it’s because he has the answer to those questions already.
In addition, we know that Papadopoulos told the campaign that Russia had the emails. Therefore, Trump likely knew and Mueller is asking people questions to which he already knows the answer.
This is some bigly stuff.