Stone claimed to know about upcoming WikiLeaks disclosures

Longtime GOP operative Roger Stone said in a 2016 interview on the Infowars radio show that he knew when WikiLeaks would disclose a trove of hacked emails, despite telling CNN on Friday that he was not aware of the timing.

In an Oct. 2, 2016, interview on Infowars, Stone said that an intermediary met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and that he had been assured that the anti-secrecy website would release the hacked documents on Oct. 5, 2016.

“Now, an intermediary met with [Assange] in London recently, who is a friend of mine and a friend of his, a believer in freedom,” Stone said at the time. CNN reported on the interview Saturday.

{mosads}

“I am assured that the motherlode is coming Wednesday. It wouldn’t be an October surprise if I told you what it was, but I have reason to believe that it is devastating because people with political judgment who are aware of the subject matter tell me this. So right now, you see a terrible scrambling by the Clintonites to attempt to discredit Assange, to try to soften the blow.”

The interview on Infowars came a day after Stone tweeted: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

Stone denied in a Friday interview on CNN that he had any advance notice about the WikiLeaks disclosures, and said he had not communicated with Assange or anyone else connected to the website.

“I had no advanced notice of the content source or exact timing of the WikiLeaks disclosures including the allegedly hacked emails,” he said. “I never received anything whatsoever from WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, anyone associated with them, or anyone else, including allegedly hacked emails, and passed them onto Donald Trump.”

To be sure, WikiLeaks did not release the hacked emails on Wednesday, Oct. 5, as Stone had predicted. The website began releasing the hacked emails of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta two days later.

Stone told CNN in an email on Saturday that he got the release date wrong because his “source changed his prediction.” 

Questions about Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks have resurfaced in recent days after the Wall Street Journal reported that Stone had claimed in an August 2016 email that he had dinner with Assange. He has since said that the email not serious, and has pointed to travel records showing that he never went to London to meet the WikiLeaks founder.