Roger Stone: I Hooked Up Nigel Farage With Donald Trump
Last week, the Guardian published a report revealing a new and odd twist in the Trump-Russia scandal: Nigel Farage, the British politician who led the Brexit movement in Great Britain, is a “person of interest” in the FBI investigation of interactions between Trump associates and the Russian government. The newspaper reported that Farage was under FBI scrutiny because he had relationships with both the Trump camp and WikiLeaks, which disseminated Democratic emails swiped by Russian hackers in an effort to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Farage dismissed the story as “hysteria” and said he had not been contacted by the FBI. But Farage did meet with Trump during the campaign. And a source close to the Trump camp tells Mother Jones that a Trump-Farage meeting was set up by Roger Stone, the veteran political dirty-trickster and long-time Trump adviser who has come under investigation in the Trump-Russia inquiry.
That source is Stone himself.
In the months since the election, Stone has drawn the attention of investigators and reporters because he made statements during the campaign that implied he possessed inside information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release material stolen in the hack-and-leak covert operation mounted by Putin’s regime to subvert the 2016 campaign and assist Trump. In early August—after WikiLeaks had disseminated Democratic Party emails hacked by Russian intelligence—Stone said at a Republican event in Florida, “I actually have communicated with [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.” On October 2, he tweeted, “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.” (This was five days before WikiLeaks released the emails of Clinton campaign CEO John Podesta, which were stolen by Russian hackers.) That month, Stone claimed he had “a back-channel communication” with Assange through “a good mutual friend.” During the campaign, Stone also communicated with Guccifer 2.0, the online persona that posted hacked Democratic emails, and Stone publicly insisted Guccifer 2.0 was not connected to the Russians.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/roger-stone-nigel-farage-donald-trump-russia-fbi/