Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone has “complied” with the House Intelligence Committee’s request to provide the identity of his emissary with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Stone’s attorney said on Friday.
One day after a subpoena was threatened if Stone refused to comply by Friday, Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone, said “Mr. Stone has complied with the committee’s requests. No further statement will be issued,” according to CNN.
Smith did not disclose whether that meant Stone actually did reveal the identity of the intermediary.
Stone attracted scrutiny after he appeared to anticipate document dumps from WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign, and even said once Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s “time in the barrel” would occur soon.
Stone dismissed claims he had any prior intel that WikiLeaks would release Podesta’s emails. Rather, he said the statement was based off his own investigations of Podesta.
Stone testified before the House intelligence panel during a closed session in September, where he fielded questions about contacts with the Russian hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 during the 2016 election. Members of the U.S. intelligence community have said they believe Guccifer 2.0 was used by Russian intelligence to propagate stolen emails.
Although Stone claimed during the hearing he did not participate in any collusion with the Russians to interfere with the election, he told reporters afterward he answered all questions, except he did not disclose the name of his intermediary with Assange.
Stone claimed the exchange with his intermediary was an off-the-record discussion with a journalist and he would not disclose the journalist’s identity, although he said he would follow up and ask the journalist if he could unveil the journalist’s identity.
Stone has said he had no direct contact with Assange and said he learned Assange had obtained Democratic National Committee emails in June via Twitter. He said he contacted the journalist, whom he said had interviewed Assange, to verify the report was true.
