Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, a junior member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday, “I’ll tell you right now that Roger Stone, I’m almost certain, will be prosecuted for lying to the House Intelligence Committee.”
The smear was timed perfectly for late Friday: early enough to generate a damaging weekend headline, but late enough that “news organizations” — such as RealClearPolitics — who repeated the smear never contacted me or my attorneys for comment or, more precisely, to get my side of the story.
The jibe from the adorable congressman from Texas is just one more example of the frivolous semantics, shifty word games and immaterial hair-splitting that the F Troop of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have used to mask the fact that they have no proof whatsoever of Russian collusion, Wikileaks collaboration or any other illegal act on my part in connection with the 2016 election. As Walter Mondale — curiously the only former vice president to skip out on former President George H. W. Bush’s funeral last week — would say, “Where’s the Beef?”
Castro added, “He first said to Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell that he had no advance knowledge of the email dumps, and then when I followed up a few hours later, he admitted that he did.” Then the precious Congressman blurted out the real game. “If there is nothing else to charge Roger Stone with, he certainly lied to our committee.”
Not so.
A closer examination of the statement I made for the committee’s record demonstrates that this is just another verbal game panel Democrats have engaged in, using the shifty parsing of words to claim in a naked effort to construct a “perjury trap.” They are oblivious to the fact that a charge of perjury requires proof of specific intent, falsity and materiality. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have none of the three.
“I had no advance notice of the source, content or exact timing of the Wikileaks disclosures,” I said in my statement. Keep an eye on the word “exact.” It is pivotal in the rhetorical hair splitting Rep. Castro engages in.
In a June 12, 2016 interview with Anderson Cooper, Julian Assange announced to the world that he had obtained material damaging to Hillary Clinton and would publish it. The Guardian reported the same day, “Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said his organisation is preparing to publish more emails Hillary Clinton sent and received while US secretary of state.”
On July 21, 2016, Heavy reported that Assange would release the new emails as part of “a series,” which strongly suggests Assange planned to time the releases for maximum effect in the presidential election.
On July 27, 2016, The New York Times reported that Assange would time his email releases for maximum political damage, releasing one batch just before the Democratic National Convention. Following his July 2016 release of documents, Assange publicly announced on his website that his organization had “a lot more material” relevant to the U.S. electoral campaign. Assange again repeated his intention to release Clinton related materials on Fox News on Aug. 24, 2016. So the fact that Wikileaks planned to release material detrimental to Hillary Clinton was clearly something all Americans knew from the public record, even Castro now tries to act like it was a closely guarded secret.
As I informed the House Intelligence committee, now-unemployed radio-host Randy Credico was my source regarding the significance and the October release of the WikiLeaks information. In the face of denials by Credico, including before the Mueller grand jury, I recently released 80 pages of text messages that prove beyond dispute that Credico was my source, and that a female attorney who represented Wikileaks was his source. The Daily Caller reported on Nov. 14, “New text messages show that Roger Stone learned about WikiLeaks’ plans to release Clinton-related emails through Randy Credico. The messages, which Stone’s lawyers extracted from an old phone on Wednesday, back up Stone’s claims about how he learned of WikiLeaks’ plans. The messages severely undercut Credico’s denials that he was a source for Stone.”
Ah, but as the congressman from Texas may not know, October has 31 days. While Credico told me the release would be in October, he was imprecise on the actual date, which was why I told the committee that I didn’t know the “exact” date in advance. When Assange held an Oct. 2, 2016 press event, I along with every other politico and political reporter in America assumed the Australian publisher would drop his first bomb. He didn’t. But as Politico reported, “Assange said the organization would publish documents on various subjects every week for the next 10 weeks, and vowed that the U.S. election-related documents would all come out before Election Day.” In fact, Assange would not make his first October release until Oct. 8.
Another member of Rep. Adam Schiff’s cabal, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, wants to subpoena my emails, text messages and phone records. Don’t worry, little surfer boy Swalwell, Robert Mueller has had them for two years. If they contained any evidence of Russian collusion or Wikileaks collaboration, you’d know it by now. Is it any wonder that I have invoked my Fifth Amendment rights not to be harassed by theses rabid partisans?
Roger Stone is a legendary Republican political consultant and a veteran of many national Republican presidential campaigns. He’s also the men’s fashion correspondent for The Daily Caller and editor of Stonezone.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.