Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen gave false testimony to Congress on Wednesday, February 27th, when he said that Trump had been phoned by Roger Stone in advance of the Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s emails and that Stone at that time told Trump that Stone had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange who had just told Stone that there would soon be a big dump by Wikileaks of damaging files from Clinton.
On February 27th, Cohen told Congress:
Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails.
In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone.
Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of “wouldn’t that be great.”
However, on that same day, both Wikileaks and Roger Stone said that this didn’t happen. On February 27th, The Hill headlined “WikiLeaks disputes Cohen, says Assange never talked to Stone”, and Rachel Frazin reported that,
WikiLeaks contradicted Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony in a tweet Wednesday, saying that founder Julian Assange never spoke on the phone with Trump adviser Roger Stone.
“WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone,” WikiLeaks tweeted. “WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton and published > 30k of her emails on 16 March 2016.” …
Stone also denied Cohen’s allegation in a text message to The Hill.
“Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true,” Stone said. … Stone … said he has never had direct contact with WikiLeaks, but said he did have a back channel to the group.
Moreover, there’s absolute proof that Wikileaks gave advance warning on 12 June 2016 — the month prior to the incident that Cohen recounted — because Britain’s ITV had headlined on 12 June 2016 “Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, said on Sunday that the journalist organisation is planning to release upcoming leaks in relation to US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.” That report said, “Speaking to Peston on Sunday, Mr Assange said Wikileaks has further information relating to claims circulating since 2015 that Clinton had in the past used her family’s private email server for official communications.”
If Mr. Stone had seen or heard about that Assange interview in June of 2016, he could have known even prior to July 2016 that Wikileaks was soon going to release things from Clinton’s personal computer.
Regarding the truthfulness track-record of Roger Stone, it is not flawless, but regarding the truthfulness track-record of Wikileaks, it is flawless, and Wikileaks said on February 27th that “founder Julian Assange never spoke on the phone with Trump adviser Roger Stone.”
Of course, regarding the truthfulness track-record of Michael Cohen, it’s infamous, and that’s the reason why he was sentenced to prison.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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