“Again, where is the crime? I engaged in politics," said longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Legal Stone claims no contact with WikiLeaks over Clinton emails

Roger Stone insisted Sunday that he never communicated with WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange.

“I had no contact with Assange,” Stone told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” The GOP operative’s alleged contact with Assange and Russian hackers ahead of the 2016 presidential election has re-emerged as a focal point of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.


“Assange himself has said, ‘While Roger Stone is a brilliant spin-master, we’ve had no communication with him whatsoever,‘” Stone added.

The remarks from Stone, one of President Donald Trump’s longtime political advisers, follow reports last week that he and conservative activist Jerome Corsi had discussed the contents of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and had foreknowledge of Assange’s plans to dump them in an effort to hobble her bid for the White House.

“I turned over one direct message to the House Intelligence Committee between the flack for WikiLeaks and I, in which he essentially brushed me off,” Stone said.

Stone also claimed he had not yet been contacted by Mueller or his team of prosecutors regarding the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

“It suggests nothing at all,” Stone said. “Again, where is the crime? I engaged in politics.”

He added: “You were in this business once, that's called politics.”