Roger Stone pushed back on reports that the hacker Guccifer 2.0, who stole emails and documents from the servers of the Democratic National Committee, was a Russian intelligence agent, calling the reports “bogus” “fabricated fake news.”
The Daily Beast reported last week that Guccifer worked for the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. The hacker stole and published documents from the DNC’s server during the summer of 2016 that showed the internal workings of the DNC during the primary, leading many to believe the party worked against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in his campaign against eventual nominee Hillary Clinton.
Stone communicated with Guccifer on occasion during the 2016 election.
Stone said in an email he still believes the hacker was an internal DNC employee and not Russian.
“Since ‘Guccifer 2.0’ used software licensed to a DNC employee the evidence that he is an American is far more significant that anything the Daily Beast is recycling. Guccifer 2.0 screamed Russian and posted five documents purposefully tainted with ‘Russian Metadata Fingerprints’. Perhaps he was trying to look like a Russian,” Stone wrote.
“As I told the House Intelligence Committee I once thought Guccifer 2.0 was a Romanian,” he said. “I no longer think so. I once believed his public claim that he hacked the DNC emails. I no longer think so. In fact, whether the DNC was hacked at all which is, despite the MSM insistence, unproven[.]”
The Daily Beast reported last week Guccifer 2.0 often used a private networking service that led back to a French server, covering his tracks. However, on at least one occasion, he failed to do this and left a Moscow-based internet protocol address on an American social media network.
That IP address led back to the GRU’s headquarters.
Stone has released all of his communication with the hacker, which he says all came after the publication of the DNC emails and documents began. Any claims of collusion between Stone and the Russians are false, he said.
“The fact that those communication are ex post facto — taking place after Wikileaks had already published the DNC material is never mentioned in the Daily Beast Story,” he said.
“My only, now entirely public exchange with the alleged hacker is perfunctory and innocuous and took place long after the publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks,” he continued. “I released the entire exchange. In other words, the collusion they accuse me of is chronologically impossible.”
