The Senate Intelligence Committee has invited former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg to appear before the panel as part of a closed-door testimony and provide them with documents of his correspondence with longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone that concern Russia, WikiLeaks, and hacking.
“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is conducting a bipartisan inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 US election,” the panel’s request says, according to media reports. “As part of that inquiry, the Committee requests that you make yourself available for a closed interview with bipartisan Committee staff at a mutually agreeable time, and also requests that you produce and preserve certain documents.”
The request was spearheaded by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and the panel’s ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who set a May 24 deadline.
Nunberg told CNN and ABC News that he plans to provide the documents to the panel later this month and will “100% comply” with their request.
“Roger Stone may have told me that he was in contact with [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange; however I do not believe that he was,” Nunberg told CNN. “Once again, I never discussed nor did Roger ever say anything to me about John Podesta’s emails — nor did Roger ever tell me that he had advance knowledge that John Podesta’s emails were going to be released.”
The comments come after Nunberg suggested in March that special counsel Robert Mueller was building a case against Stone as part of his Russia investigation, due to Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks — an accusation Stone denied was true.
Stone distanced himself from Nunberg after his March media blitz, calling him a “cocaine addict.”
Both the Senate Intelligence Committee and Mueller’s team are conducting investigations into Russia meddling in the U.S. election process.
Nunberg previously appeared before one of Mueller’s grand juries as well as the Senate intelligence panel.
Stone attracted scrutiny after he appeared to anticipate a WikiLeaks document release, saying in 2016 that Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s “time in the barrel” would soon occur, after which Podesta’s hacked emails were published by WikiLeaks.
Stone has denied ever possessing any knowledge of a coming WikiLeaks release of Podesta’s emails. Rather, he said the statement was based on his own investigations of Podesta.
WikiLeaks is well known for publishing leaked secrets on its website. Among its controversial publications, the website has made public stolen emails from Democratic officials during the 2016 campaign as well as documents on CIA hacking tools.
A U.S. intelligence community assessment determined with “high confidence” last January that WikiLeaks was used by Russian intelligence to release information as part of an effort to elect Trump. WikiLeaks denies this assertion.
