FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2017, file photo, Roger Stone arrives to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show political operative Roger Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart of then-candidate Donald Trump's run for president. 
 
 The emails, which were published Thursday by The New York Times, touch on a central question of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation: Did Stone have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked material damaging to Democrat Hillary Clinton? 
 
 Stone says no, and the emails do not provide a definitive answer to that question. But the correspondence suggests that Stone wanted Bannon to see him as plugged in to WikiLeaks as it was planning to publish documents that would upend the campaign. 
 
 American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian agents were the source of information released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. And Mueller, who is investigating potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, has focused on Stone recently. 
 
 Mueller's team questioned Bannon last month about his exchanges with Stone, according to a person familiar with the interview. Bannon's interview was with prosecutors, though other people close to Stone have been called before a grand jury to discuss his ties to WikiLeaks. 
 
 The person familiar with Bannon's interview said Bannon and other top campaign officials were skeptical of Stone and his claims about having insight into WikiLeaks' efforts. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the confidential interview. 
 
 Stone, who confirmed the authenticity of the emails, denies being a conduit to WikiLeaks. 
 
 "What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called 'politics.' It's not illegal," he said in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Daily Caller website. 
 
 He said he had based his comments on Assange's public statements and conversations with a New York radio host, Randy Credico, a vocal supporter of Assange who has also been interviewed by Mueller's grand jury. 
 
 In a telephone interview with the AP, Stone said: "I had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures." 
 
 In one email exchange from Oct. 4. 2016, Bannon asks Stone about an announcement that morning by Assange that puzzled some Trump supporters. 
 
 In the announcement, Assange said he would be posting a cache of documents weekly that would include some related to the 2016 election, among other topics, but he denied that WikiLeaks intended to harm Clinton, saying such suggestions were "false." 
 
 Many Trump supporters — egged on by Stone himself — had been expecting Assange to provide details on potentially damaging information about Clinton, possibly even posting it that day. Stone had built up suspense on Twitter, saying on Oct. 3, 2016, "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp." 
 
 In the wake of the disappointing announcement, Bannon fires off an email asking Stone "What was that this morning???" 
 
 Stone writes back: "Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done. However —a load every week going forward." 
 
 Days later, WikiLeaks released the first batch of material — emails stolen from the account of Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta. The Oct. 7, 2016, document dump came just hours after The Washington Post released audio from "Access Hollywood" in which Trump boasted of kissing and groping women without their permission. 
 
 WikiLeaks proceeded to dribble out the Podesta emails a thousand or so a day until Election Day. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report. ||||| Mr. Stone has repeatedly said that he had access only to Mr. Assange’s public statements and to secondhand information from journalists or other sources. If he implied that he had more direct sources, he has said, he was simply engaging in political hyperbole. 
 
 In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Stone insisted he did nothing more than “posture, bluff, hype,” based on WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed and miscellaneous tips. 
 
 “I didn’t need any inside knowledge to do that. They keep looking for some direct communication with WikiLeaks that doesn’t exist,” he said of journalists reporting on the Russia investigation. He added that he had paid for two polygraph tests that prove he is telling the truth. 
 
 But some of his previous statements have proved false. Mr. Stone told The Washington Post this week that he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump campaign officials. “There are no such communications and if Bannon says there are he would be dissembling,” he said. 
 
 This article is based on interviews with people familiar with the Russia investigation and the inner workings of the Trump campaign, as well as a review of hundreds of text messages and emails that Mr. Stone exchanged over months with several associates, including Randy Credico, a New York comedian, former radio host and left-wing activist whom Mr. Stone has repeatedly identified as his source about WikiLeaks. 
 
 Besides the confusion caused by Mr. Stone’s penchant for innuendo and outright lies, investigators are hampered by the fact that Mr. Assange remains out of reach, holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has lived for six years in fear of extradition to face possible criminal charges. 
 
 Still, Mr. Bannon’s October 2016 email correspondence shows that the perception that Mr. Stone knew what WikiLeaks had in store for Mrs. Clinton spread to the highest levels of the Trump campaign. No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump or his advisers alerted the authorities. ||||| The Washington Post reported that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon testified for the grand jury yesterday regarding his communications with me regarding the Wikileaks disclosures in October 2016. 
 
 The Special Counsel is reportedly probing whether I somehow directed or urged Wikileaks to release the allegedly hacked e-mails from the DNC in the wake of the Billy Bush accusations against Trump on Oct. 7. I did not — and there is no evidence to the contrary. In fact, Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange announced his release schedule on Oct. 2. 
 
 When Assange held a press event Oct. 2 (Oct. 3 U.S. time) and did not release any documents that day as had been widely expected, Bannon e-mailed me asking why. 
 
 I had long predicted an October release based on Assange’s June 2016 CNN interview with Anderson Cooper in which he said he had a trove of documents on Hillary and would release them. I had been told this would come in October for months by my source Randy Credico, whom I identified for the House Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Then Bannon (or his hatchet man Sam Nunberg) leaked this e-mail exchange to the various media outlets. 
 
 On Oct 4, 2016, at 9:25 AM, Steve Bannon < > wrote: 
 
 > 
 
 > What was that this morning??? ———- Forwarded message ——— 
 
 From: Roger Stone < 
 
 Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 9:47 AM 
 
 Subject: Re: 
 
 To: Steve Bannon < > Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done. However –a load every week going forward. Roger stone 
 
 _________________________ 
 
 The source of Assange’s Security Concerns came from Credico 
 
 On March 9, 2018, I wrote on Stone Cold Truth: 
 
 When Assange made no disclosures on October 1st, Alex Jones was among those publicly m*therfucking Assange for losing his nerve. Credico told me that Assange had demurred on October 1st because of the concerns of one of his lawyers, Daniel Ellsberg, about threats to Assange’s life if he went forward with the disclosures. Remember, Hillary Clinton actually advocated the use of a drone strike to kill Assange in London, in order to prevent the disclosure of what she knew he had. Credico told me that Secretary of State John Kerry had astonishingly gone to British Prime Minister Teresa May and asked that Britain rescind its diplomatic recognition of Ecuador for one day, stripping Assange of his asylum, so that United and British authorities could storm the Embassy and seize Assange … Credico predicted that Assange “would do the right thing” and in fact Assange announced the schedule of a serious of forthcoming disclosures in his October 2nd remarks, which was little noticed by the press. He would follow this schedule to devastating effect. 
 
 More importantly my prediction of “a load every week going forward” is based on Assange’s own public announcement hours before-that there would be weekly releases going through and beyond the election and not any communication with Wikileaks or Assange. Politico reported this. 
 
 When Bannon’s minion Matt Boyle asked me if what Assange had was “good” I replied it was, based on Credico’s insistence the material was “devastating,” “bombshell” and would “change the race.” This turned out to be right, although — as I have testified — I never knew the content or source of the Wikileaks disclosures in advance. 
 
 Bannon’s animus toward me stems from a column I wrote for the Daily Caller arguing that he had outlived his usefulness in the Trump White House and should be fired. The next day, he was. 
 
 Bannon also told Rhe Washington Post that the idea to bring the woman victims to the debate was his while the paper trail tells a very different story. 
 
 If the grand jury was told that either of my comments to Bannon were based on anything other than information I had already attributed to my source under oath or information reported publicly that day, they were misled. 
 
 What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called “politics.” It’s not illegal. 
 
 Roger Stone is a legendary Republican political consultant and a veteran of many national Republican presidential campaigns. He’s also the men’s fashion correspondent for The Daily Caller and editor of Stonezone.com. 
 
 The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
– Newly released emails from the 2016 presidential campaign appear to show political operative Roger Stone presenting himself as a WikiLeaks insider to Steve Bannon, who was at the heart of then-candidate Donald Trump's run for president. The emails, published Thursday by the New York Times, touch on a central question of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation: Did Stone have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton? Stone says no, and the emails don't provide a definitive answer to that question. But the correspondence suggests Stone wanted Bannon to see him as plugged in to WikiLeaks as it was planning to publish documents that would upend the campaign. US intelligence agencies have concluded Russian agents were the source of info released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. Mueller's team questioned Bannon last month about his exchanges with Stone, a source says. Bannon's interview was with prosecutors, though other people close to Stone have been called before a grand jury to discuss his ties to WikiLeaks. The source said Bannon and other top campaign officials were skeptical of Stone and his claims about having insight into WikiLeaks' efforts. Stone, who confirmed the emails' authenticity, denies being a conduit to WikiLeaks. "What I am guilty of is using publicly available information and a solid tip to bluff, posture, hype, and punk Democrats on Twitter. This is called 'politics.' It's not illegal," he said Thursday in a Daily Caller op-ed. Stone tells the AP: "I had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures." (Stone thinks he knows who wrote the now infamous anonymous Times op-ed.)