Political operative Roger Stone dismissed the House probe of Russia’s election meddling as a “political exercise” and reasserted that last year’s Democratic National Committee cyberattack, which triggered WikiLeaks to release thousands of embarrassing emails, was “an inside job.”
On Tuesday Mr. Stone, who played an instrumental role in drafting Donald Trump into presidential politics, spent more than three hours in a closed-door session of the House intelligence committee discussing his communications with the shadowy hacker, Guccifer 2.0, who has claimed credit for the DNC attack.
Speaking with reporters afterwards and in written testimony before, Mr. Stone argued his communications with Guccifer 2.0 had nothing to do with the attack. He also said he had no advance knowledge of the leak of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, never colluded with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and never worked with Russian officials to influence the presidential election.
On Tuesday he also cast doubt on the entire claim, made by the U.S. intelligence community in January, that Russian operatives orchestrated the DNC cyberattack.
“The science seems to indicate an inside job, so I don’t know whether the DNC was hacked, I don’t know at all that it was hacked by Russians, and now, on the basis of this report, I tend to believe it was an inside job,” Mr. Stone said, adding that the data could have been “downloaded to, say, a thumb drive and spirited out of the building.”
The “inside job” theory has gained traction since a research memo published by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) last summer scrutinized DNC metadata and data transfer speeds.
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VIPS, a collection of former intel analysts, argued in a research memo entitled “Was the ’Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?” that the emails — which showed bitter infighting between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders — were released via an internal leak instead of a remote hack. Mr. Stone has repeatedly said he believes this idea.
He has also said he was kept apprised of Mr. Assange’s plans to release the Podesta emails by a journalist he said served as an “intermediary.” But he did not name the journalist.
“I recognize that those who believe that there was collusion between the Trump camp and the Russian state, now say Stone, ’MUST HAVE’ been involved, but that is not based on one shred of evidence,” Mr. Stone wrote in his testimony. “This is nothing more than conjecture, supposition, projection, allegation, and coincidence, none of it proven by evidence or fact.”
The issue of the intermediary’s identity appeared to stand out as the major point of contention on Tuesday with the House committee’s lead Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California.
Mr. Schiff told reporters Mr. Stone could face a subpoena to answer more questions.
“Hopefully, he will cooperate in the future,” said Mr. Schiff, who didn’t specify the exact question Mr. Stone failed to answer. “If not, it will be necessary to subpoena him to bring him back to answer those important questions.”
In the lead-up to the hearing, Mr. Stone had criticized Mr. Schiff for suggesting in March that Mr. Stone had a direct line to Russian hackers based on his comments predicting the release of the Podesta emails.
For months the political theater around the flamboyant Mr. Stone — who had a book and documentary released this year chronicling his role helping Mr. Trump rise to power — has grown. Part of the drama has been Mr. Stone’s outspoken desire to defend himself in public. On Tuesday he blasted the committee for holding his inquiry behind closed doors.
“It’s entirely a political exercise,” he said. “They make the charges against you in a public forum to maximize coverage for their U.S. Senate campaign or their re-election, but then they only allow you to respond behind closed doors and they won’t even allow the release of the transcript. It really puts you at an extraordinarily unfair advantage.”
After the hearing Mr. Stone also predicted the indictment of his longtime colleague Paul Manafort, whom special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating.
In July federal agents raided Mr. Manafort’s home, reportedly seeking financial documents — which was taken as a sign that Mr. Mueller is aggressively probing Mr. Manafort’s taxes and his foreign banking as part of the probe.
Mr. Stone and Mr. Manafort worked together to help elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 and then opened a lobbying firm that developed a reputation for its sophisticated work with challenging foreign clients.
In speaking to reporters Tuesday, Mr. Stone said that Mr. Manafort had confirmed to him that investigators said they plan to indict him as part of the DOJ’s Russia probe.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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