• Mueller grand jury witness Randy Credico said in a recent interview that a WikiLeaks associate helped him obtain an interview in August 2016 with Julian Assange.
• Credico’s admission is significant because he has previously downplayed his links to WikiLeaks and and denied being a conduit between WikiLeaks and Trump confidant Roger Stone.
• Stone has claimed for more than a year that Credico passed him information from a WikiLeaks attorney regarding the group’s plans to release information on the Clinton campaign.

A left-wing comedian who has appeared before the Mueller grand jury acknowledged recently that he had a contact to WikiLeaks who helped him obtain an interview with Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I knew someone who was a peripheral figure. [Assange’s] got like 200 lawyers,” Randy Credico said in a Nov. 28 interview with “Empire Files.”

“In the summer of 2016, I asked this woman if she could somehow get a message to Assange asking him to do a new Thursday night show I was doing for a while,” added Credico, a former longtime associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone’s.

Credico interviewed Assange for his radio show on WBAI on Aug. 25, 2016.

Credico has previously claimed that he did not know any attorneys for WikiLeaks or have any close contacts with the group.

Credico did not identify his female contact on “Empire Files,” but he is longtime friends with a left-wing attorney who has represented WikiLeaks, Margaret Ratner Kunstler. The Villager reported in August that Credico previously lived with Kunstler and her late husband, the radical lawyer William Kunstler.

Credico also sent Stone a text message on Aug. 19, 2016 in which he mentioned Kunstler in regards to his efforts to interview Assange.

“I’m going to have Julian Assange on my show next Thursday,” Credico wrote Stone on Aug. 19, 2016. “Kunstler wife is his lawyer or at least one of them.”

In another text message to Stone, Credico told Stone that “I’m best friends with [Assange’s] lawyer and leave it at that and leave it alone.”

Credico said on “Empire Files” that when he went to London in late September 2016 in hopes of visiting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, “this woman told me ‘you’re never going to get into see him.'”

Credico, who testified before Mueller’s grand jury on Sept. 7, denied earlier this year knowing any WikiLeaks attorneys.

“I don’t know any lawyers in this country that actually represent Assange. I know three of his lawyers. They all live in London. I met them last year when I met Assange for the very first time, face-to-face, which was on Sept. 13, 2017,” Credico told Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff on April 13.

Credico’s links to Kunstler are central to Roger Stone’s explanation for his apparent insight into WikiLeaks’ plans to release information on the Clinton campaign.

Stone and Credico’s contacts are a central focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Mueller is investigating whether Trump associates had advance knowledge that WikiLeaks would release emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He is also probing whether anyone told then-candidate Donald Trump about the contents of the Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks dump.

Stone, a longtime GOP political operative, is a focus of the investigation, largely because of his close ties to Trump and a series of cryptic tweets he posted in the weeks and months before the election that suggested he had some insight into a pending WikiLeaks release.

But Stone has said that he did not know the source of the WikiLeaks dumps or that the organization would release Podesta’s emails. He has instead has claimed that he monitored Assange’s statements during the campaign about pending releases that would hurt the Clinton campaign.

Stone has also said that he received vague tips from Credico, who he has said told him in the months leading up to the election that WikiLeaks planned to release documents that would “roil” the Clinton campaign.

Stone has said that Credico’s WikiLeaks contact was Kunstler.

Credico has largely dodged questions about his links to Kunstler and whether she provided him information about WikiLeaks.

“Kunstler has been cleared they all know she had nothing to do with this,” Credico said in an email exchange with The Daily Caller News Foundation on Sunday when asked if Kunstler has appeared before Mueller’s grand jury.

Credico initially contacted TheDCNF alleging that this reporter was having an affair with Stone. Credico has made similar allegations against David Lugo, a filmmaker who testified before the special counsel’s grand jury. He accused both Lugo and this reporter of being Stone’s “butt boy[s].”

Lugo testified to Mueller’s grand jury on Oct. 19 that Credico threatened to put “a hole in my head.”

Martin Stolar, a lawyer for Credico, refused to answer questions about Credico’s recent email outreach or his comments in the “Empire Files” interview.

“No,” he responded when asked if he wanted to comment on his client’s attempts to harass reporters.

Stone and Credico, who have worked together off and on since 2002, have battled through the press for almost a year, ever since Stone told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Nov. 13, 2017, that Credico was his alleged WikiLeaks conduit.

Credico has appeared for numerous interviews, mostly on MSNBC, to accuse Stone of lying about his WikiLeaks back channel claim. In the interviews, Credico has portrayed himself as a victim of Stone’s, accusing the Trump associate of attempting to intimidate and influence his testimony.

Credico has also selectively provided text messages and emails to outlets like CNN and The Wall Street Journal, which he claims shows Stone threatening him.

For all his denials, text messages show that Credico provided Stone with insight into the information that WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign. (RELATED: Bombshell Text Messages Back Up Roger Stone’s Claims About WikiLeaks ‘Back Channel’)

“Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary,” Credico wrote to Stone on Aug. 27, 2016.

“[B]ig news Wednesday,” he wrote to Stone on Oct. 1, 2016, days before WikiLeaks began releasing the Podesta emails. “[N]ow pretend u don’t know me.”

“Hillary’s campaign will die this week.”

Credico also appeared concerned at the time that Stone would identify him as his WikiLeaks contact.

“You are not going to drag my name into this are you,” Credico wrote on Sept. 29, 2016.

In a Sept. 19 email, Credico referred again to a link to an Assange lawyer, seemingly Kunstler.

“I can’t ask them favors every other day. I asked one of his lawyers…they have major legal headaches riggt [sic] now..relax,” Credico wrote to Stone.

Stone had asked Credico to contact WikiLeaks to find out whether the group has a 2011 email from Clinton related to Libya. Credico claims that he did not pass on the request.

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