Roger Stone is a longtime associate of President Donald Trump. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images White House Trump says he never asked Roger Stone about WikiLeaks

President Donald Trump on Thursday denied that he ever had communication with his longtime associate Roger Stone about WikiLeaks or ever directed anyone on his campaign to contact Stone about the anti-secrecy organization.

The emphatic statement, in an interview with The New York Times, came almost a week after Stone was indicted on multiple felony charges, some of which are related to his truthfulness concerning matters about WikiLeaks.


“No, I didn’t. I never did,” Trump told The Times when asked whether he’d spoken with Stone about WikiLeaks.

When pressed by Times reporters on the matter, Trump also denied ever directing anyone to contact Stone about WikiLeaks. “Never did,” the president said.

On Jan. 25, Stone was indicted on seven charges related to allegedly lying to Congress and efforts to intimidate another witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Randy Credico, who was in contact with WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange in 2016. The indictment further says that an unnamed individual gave instructions to an unidentified senior Trump campaign official to get in touch with Stone “about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks was holding about Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It remains unclear who that official was.

Stone has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has said that Mueller’s indictment is “thin” and that the particular section about a senior campaign official is based on something that never happened.

Also in the Time interview, Trump said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is expected to leave the Justice Department soon, had told Trump’s lawyers that the president is not a target of Mueller’s inquiry. Until Matthew Whitaker became acting attorney general, Rosenstein oversaw the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.