Among the revelations in special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee was that the hackers communicated with individuals in the United States — including “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.”
Although not named in Friday’s documents, that person is widely known to be Trump confidant Roger Stone, who has previously posted screenshots of his interactions with one of the hackers, Guccifer 2.0.
Stone has also admitted to communicating with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who published the leaked DNC emails.
The events laid out in Mueller’s indictment resemble details from previous reporting about Stone and his communications during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
On Friday evening, Stone suggested that the unnamed individual in the indictment does refer to him.
“I think I probably am the person referred to,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
Earlier, he had said that he did not believe it was him.
“I don’t think it is me because I wasn’t in regular contact with members of the Trump campaign,” he told CNN on Friday afternoon. “Look, [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein said in his comments that they knew of no crime by U.S. citizens. They included my exchange with Guccifer which is now public, in the indictment. And it’s benign. So I don’t know that it refers to me.”
“My contact with the campaign in 2016 was Donald Trump,” he added. “I was not in regular contact with campaign officials.”
Explaining the apparent reversal, Stone told Cuomo that he initially had not read the full indictment, so he “wasn’t sure.”
In a statement to HuffPost, Stone downplayed his communications with Guccifer 2.0 as “benign.”
“As I testified before the House Intelligence Committee under oath, my 24-word exchange with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 is benign based on its content, context and timing,” he wrote. “This exchange is entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails, as well as taking place many weeks after the events described in today’s indictment and after Wikileaks had published the DNC material.”
He went on to argue that “the indictment does not allege or even allude that I was part of this alleged hacking nor does it allege or allude to me having anything to do with getting the allegedly hacked material to WikiLeaks. The indictments today show I did not conspire with any of the defendants to do the hacking, distribute the stolen emails or aid them in any way.”
In May, Stone told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he is “prepared” if he is indicted by Mueller’s team.
Read more about Friday’s indictments here.
This story has been updated with later comments from Stone.