Roger Stone says WikiLeaks disclosures weren’t discussed with Donald Trump

President Trump’s former campaign adviser and longtime confidant Roger Stone has reiterated his innocence with respect to alleged Russian election meddling as his communications with fellow political consultant Sam Nunberg face scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 race.

Mr. Nunberg this week said that the special counsel’s office has subpoenaed him seeking communications to and from several fellow former members of the 2016 Trump campaign, Mr. Stone included, raising questions once again about the latter’s ties to WikiLeaks and its publication of stolen Democratic Party emails and documents allegedly sourced by Russian hackers.

“I have always operated on the assumption that there are folks in the government who have examined all of my communications, and I can say with confidence that I know nothing about any Russian collusion or any other inappropriate act,” Mr. Stone told MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd on Tuesday.

“I’ve been accused of being a dirty trickster,” he said during the interview. “There is one trick that’s not in my bag — that’s treason. I have no knowledge or involvement with Russian collusion and I don’t know anybody else who does

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Russian hackers breached the Democratic National Committee and the personal email account of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, then released stolen data through Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks website as well as a Twitter account and website connected to Guccifer 2.0, a pseudonymous internet persona, as part of state-sponsored interference campaign meant to disrupt the race and damage Mrs. Clinton’s odds of winning.

Mr. Stone boasted of having back-channel communications with Mr. Assange prior to WikiLeaks’ publication of Mr. Podesta’s stolen emails, and he told The Washington Times last March that he exchanged private but “completely innocuous” Twitter messages with Guccifer 2.0 during the election.

The Justice Department appointed Mr. Mueller to investigate aspects of the presidential race in May, and the special counsel’s office has since asked witnesses pointed questions about whether Mr. Trump knew that Democratic data had been hacked or was involved in their release, NBC News reported last week, citing multiple people familiar with the probe.

“I never had any advanced knowledge of the content, the source or the exact timing of the WikiLeaks disclosures,” Mr. Stone said Tuesday. “I can honestly say that candidate Trump, Donald Trump, President Trump and I have never discussed the WikiLeaks disclosures.

“I understand the effort to distract from the content of those emails because they show Hillary Clinton to be greedy, corrupt and up to her neck in campaign dirty tricks, so let’s make a controversy about where they came from, not the substance of them,” he said in the interview.

Mr. Stone previously identified the intermediary who confirmed that WikiLeaks would release damaging material during the election season as Randy Credico, a radio host who has reportedly met personally with Mr. Assange several times. Mr. Credico was subpoenaed in December to testify before the House Intelligence Committee investigating the 2016 race, but asserted his Fifth Amendment protections and declined to speak.

Mr. Assange has previously denied communicating with Mr. Stone, claiming the longtime political strategist was “trolling Democrats” by claiming links to WikiLeaks.

“Say this about Julian Assange,” Mr. Stone said Tuesday. “I reject the idea that he’s a Russian asset. I reject the idea that Wikileaks is a Russian front. I think that he’s a journalist, a courageous journalist, and frankly his track record for accuracy and authenticity is superior to The New York Times or The Washington Post.”