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The campaign strategist declare his actions were just “politics” and not Russian “collusion” as he has been accused. Mr Stone told CNN on Saturday that when he wrote about the upcoming Wikileaks dump in 2016, he had “no advance notice” about Russian hackers involvement or the stealing from the personal account of Mrs Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta. While Mr Stone has said that he is “prepared” for a Mueller indictment, he claimed that he would not face charges unless the investigation had a “political vendetta” while speaking to Meet the Press. He said: “I am prepared should that be the case.

“But I think it just demonstrates, again, this was supposed to be about Russian collusion, and it appears to be an effort to silence or punish the president’s supporters and his advocates.” He also said that the information that he had tweeted and emailed had come from either the comedian and radio host Randy Credico or the mainstream media. Mr Stone had tweeted in October 2016 several messages about the Clinton campaign that raised eyebrows. He had said that her campaign “is done” and that he has “total confidence” that Wikileaks founder and “hero” Julian Assange will help to “lock her up”.

Roger Stone denies advance knowledge of the Wikileaks dump in 2016

Wikileaks published over 20,000 Clinton emails in 2016

During the CNN interview hosted by Michael Smerconish, Mr Stone said that he had “testified truthfully” to the House Intelligence Committee as well as passed two polygraph tests and added that he had “never had any direct contact with Julian Assange or Wikileaks”. He said: “I had no advance notice of the actual content or source of the material.” However, the New York Times revealed last week that there are several emails that show Mr Stone and Steve Bannon discussing potential “bombshells” from Wikileaks in 2016. Mr Stone said: “What I have done here is perfectly legal.

Roger Stone continually denies any collusion

That's politics, but it's not collusion Roger Stone

"I took a solid tip and entirely public information that could be gleaned from the Wikileaks' Twitter feed and by setting a Google News alert on Julian Assange and reading every interview to hype and punk and promote and posture and bluff the Democrats. “That's politics, but it's not collusion." Mr Snerconish pushed back by asking: “Your explanation is essentially one of you were paying very, very close attention to what was being reported on Assange and you were only reflecting that in your own tweets. “Were you BS'ing?"

Roger Stone does not think he will be indicted