In his testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen testified that he was in then-candidate Trump’s office and heard a phone call between Roger Stone on speaker phone and Donald Trump. Cohen said he heard Stone tell the future president that he had spoken by phone with Julian Assange and that the Clinton email dump was coming. But Wikileaks and Roger Stone both say Cohen is lying.
As part of his opening statement, Cohen said:
As I earlier stated, 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.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Soon after a transcript of Cohen’s opening statement was published, WikiLeaks tweeted:
(note that WikiLeaks had already publicly announced its pending publications and has always denied speaking to Roger Stone)
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 27, 2019
Here’s the real truth: Everyone who was paying attention knew that Wikileaks was about to dump the Hillary emails because Julian Assange said so publicly on June 12, 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,” ITV News reported.
According to Buzzfeed News:
Roger Stone pushed back against Michael Cohen’s claims that Stone told Trump in July 2016 that he had spoken to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about an email dump that would hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign, saying in a text message to BuzzFeed News: “Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true.”
The two principals who were involved in the phone call that Michael Cohen said proved that Trump knew that the Wikileaks dump was coming before it broke called Cohen a liar. I wonder what the sentence is for lying to Congress while waiting to serve a prison term for lying to Congress.
Cross posted at The Lid
