Volume V: The Second Juiciest Part

 

If the first part of Volume V is the juiciest, the second part is a rather distant second. It purports to deal with the hack and leak, but also addresses Roger Stone's reaction. It covers pages 170 through 258.  Volume V concurs in the general intelligence consensus -- the hack and leak was ordered by Putin to undermine Clinton and promote Trump. The expectation was that Clinton would nonetheless win and be weakened in her presidency. 

Volume V also details Roger Stone's attempts to find out what Wikileaks was doing.  On the advice of Manafort (interestingly enough), the campaign refrained from reaching out to Wikileaks directly, but received regular information from Stone.  Stone, in turn, used intermediaries of his own to contact Wikileaks.  Communications between Stone and Wikileaks and the campaign and Stone were one way, with one notable exception.  Roger Stone sought to find out what Wikileaks was going to publish and pass it on the the campaign so they could plan their strategy accordingly, but they did not pass messages from the campaign to Wikileaks or give Wikileaks any advice.  Stone's role appears to have been a passive observer, seeking information on something beyond his control to pass on to the campaign for their use.

The Russians

One interesting thing I learned from the report was that separate units of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) were responsible for the hacking and the dissemination.  Unit 26165, which cyber security referred to as Fancy Bear, was responsible for the hacking.  Unit 74455 was responsible for dissemination, including creating the Guccifer persona (p. 176).  Rather than refer to these meaningless numbers, I will refer to Unit 26165 as Fancy Bear and Unit 74455 as Guccifer.

This distinction was not absolute.  It was Guccifer, not Fancy Bear, that made the attacks on state election infrastructure described in Volume I (p. ).  And it was Fancy Bear that created the DCLeaks website.  DCLeaks was launched on June 8, 2016, six days before the hack became public knowledge, although preparations were underway since Fancy Bear first breached the server  (p. 183).  The site garnered over one million page views before it was shut down in March, 2017, but never broke through to the general public (pp. 184-185).  

Guccifer was more successful.  The personal was created on June 15, 2016, the day after news of the hack became public, to claim that a lone hacker was responsible and was almost immediately fingered as a Russian front.. Guccifer appears to have recognized that the secret to success in spreading information was to find the right nodes to spread it, including Gawker and Smoking Gun (pp. 192, 209) and, most notoriously, the Florida blogger who received the Democrats' turnout model and said the information was  "worth a million dollars" and equivalent to a "the map to where all the troops are deployed."  He posted it publicly, presumably doing considerable damage to Democrats (pp. 193-194).*

Presumably at one time Guccifer's Russian ties would have tainted it irretrievably.  No longer. While I seem to recall contacts between Roger Stone and Guccifer, the report does not discuss them.

Wikileaks 

Wikileaks was actively fishing for damaging information on Hillary Clinton and did its best to create the impression that it had more than was actually the case.  Although Wikileaks did not receive information from Guccifer until July 18, 2016, as early as March, Wikileaks set up a searchable database of Hillary Clinton e-mails that were released pursuant to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and broadly hinted that it had non-public information in order to attract such material (p. 207). Guccifer boasted from its first appearance that it has provided the materials to Wikileaks, a month before the transfer actually took place (pp. 189).  

One thing that I will admit to not remembering was that there were no Wikileaks releases between the July 22, 2016 release of DNC materials right before the Democratic Convention and the releases, beginning October7, of John Podesta material.  That means that Wikileaks fell silent throughout August and September.

Roger Stone

Roger Stone

Roger Stone repeatedly told the Trump campaign in April and May that Wikileaks was going to release damaging information on the Clinton Campaign.  He spoke to to Gates 67 times and Manafort 64 times throughout April and May (p. 223).  (Manafort and Stone are long-term business partners).  Manafort was initial skeptical, but when the July 22, 2016 materials dropped, he became convinced that Stone had an inside line to Wikileaks and encouraged Stone to use it.  At the same time, he warned that campaign to refrain from any direct contact with Wikileaks and let Stone handle it (p. 233). Roger Stone, by contrast, was a private citizen and not a member of the Trump campaign and therefore so far as I know it was not illegal for him to communicate with Wikileaks, although it was scandalous, indecent, and highly embarrassing. Stone did his best to conceal his communications with Wikileaks and, like Manafort, concealed well enough that the Committee was not sure what happened.  

Before the Wikileaks release, the Trump campaign was mostly focused on possible scandals surrounding the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's missing e-mails, which it was convinced were highly incriminating.  On June 12, 2016, two days before the hack became public knowledge, Julian Assange publicly announced plans to release information on Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign welcomed the announcement.  It was equally enthusiastic when it learned that the DNC had been hacked (p. 225).  Volume V makes clear that the Trump campaign was completely taken by surprise when it learned of the DNC hacks, but eager to exploit them.  And, indeed, Guccifer began releasing information almost at once, which the campaign was eager to use to its advantage.  At least one campaign staffer ventured doubts as to whether the use of hacked documents was allowed and was told that once they entered the public domain, there was no prohibition (pp. 228-229).   

On the other hand, the campaign heeded Manafort's warning and refrained from contacting Wikileaks, relying instead on Roger Stone. 

Jerome Corsi

Stone first reached out for an intermediary in Jerome Corsi of World News Daily (WND, known on our side of the fence as Wing Nut Daily), probably on July 22 or 25, (pp. 233-234).  Corsi, in turn, contacted Assange through his own intermediatry (p. 234) and texted Stone on August 2 that "our friend" planned two more drops, one shortly after he (Corsi) returned from Italy and one in October.  He mentioned "more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy" and suggested that Hillary was in failing health and further scandals about the Foundation (pp. 237-238).  Notoriously, Stone tweeted on August 21 that, "it will soon the (sic) Podesta's time in the barrel."  A week earlier, he told the campaign to expect damaging leaks about Podesta, but said he did not know the "inner workings" (pp. 240-241).  Corsi, it should be noted, later denied contact with Wikileaks and claimed to have deduced the Podesta leak from Assange's comments. He took the Fifth when subpoenaed by the Committee.  (pp. 239-240).  

Randy Credico

In late August, Stone also began cultivating Randy Credico as an intermediary.  Credico's politics are apparently far-left,*** in contrast to the far-right Corsi, but the two are an example of horseshoe theory, both champions of Wikileaks and both eager to work with Stone to advance Trump's fortunes.  Credico interviewed both Stone and Assange in late August, making him an obvious choice as an intermediation (p. 242).  Credico appears to have sent a stream of messages promising an "October Surprise" that would be devastating the the Clinton campaign, which Stone passed on to the Trump campaign.  The surprise kept failing to appear.  Originally the date was set to be October 4 and Credico texted Stone, "Hillary's campaign will die this week." Stone again publicly proclaimed his inside knowledge of Wikileaks (p. 246).  Nothing was released October 4, and the date was pushed to October 5.  Nothing was released October 5, either. Nothing came down October 6, but Stone continued to promise "a devastating expose" (p. 249).  

On October 7, at about 4:00 p.m. the Washington Post published the Access Hollywood tape. Trump apparently learned about the release about an hour before it came out, presumably because the paper called him for comment (p. 249). Corsi appears to have learned of the tape earlier on the same day, at a WND phone call at 1:08 p.m. Stone spoke to Corsi at 1:42 and 2:18 that day and urged him to contact Assange and have him publish his material on Podesta "to balance the news cycle."  The Committee is uncertain how Stone learned that the Access Hollywood tape was about to drop, since he did not speak to the campaign that day, and he spoke to the Post, but not to any of the reporters involved with the tape. Though the Committee does not say so, Stone's conversations with Corsi appear to have taken place before the Trump campaign learned about the tape, leading to an obvious conclusion -- Stone probably learned about the tape from Corsi.  The urging to Wikileaks appears to be the only time Stone ever suggested an action to Wikileaks or acted as anything other than a passive recipient of its information. 

At 4:32, 32 minutes after the Access Hollywood tape was released, Wikileaks began releasing John Podesta e-mails (p. 250).  In all probability, Assange would have done exactly the same thing, whether Stone urged him to do so or not.  Wikileaks continued making regular releases until Election Day.  The material was nowhere near as powerful as Stone and his associates claimed, revealing no more than politicians behaving like politicians, admittedly not an edifying sight.  Nonetheless, the Trump campaign eagerly exploited the material that came its way, working it into their tweets, speeches, and press releases, unconcerned with their origin with a Russian hack, and doing their best to blame anyone else (pp. 252-254). In the end, Stone said that Trump should reward him for his work with Wikileaks, but then proceeded to destroy all his e-mail exchanged and do all he could to conceal his (indirect) contacts (p. 251).  

NEXT: The juice factor dies fast

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*Roger Stone, it should be noted, dismissed the information as "Pretty standard" (pp. 195-196).
**I suppose it is possible that Wikileaks had advance knowledge of the hacks that Roger Stone learned of their plans in a distorted form.  But that is pure speculation unsupported by any evidence.
***Credico was director of the William Moses Kunster Fund for Racial Justice, founded by the radical lawyer William Kunster (p. 242).  Margaret Kunstler, widow of the late William Kunsler, was a member and served as a lawyer for Wikileaks and Assange (. 244).