This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone said on Sunday he would have to consult with his attorneys about potentially cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

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“That’s a question I’ll have to determine after my attorneys have some discussion,” Stone said on ABC’s This Week. “If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about – which I know of none – but if there is I would certainly testify honestly. I’d also testify honestly about any other matter including communications with the president.”

Mueller and his team have indicted or secured guilty pleas from at least 34 individuals, including prominent members of Trump’s campaign, and three companies.

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Stone has repeatedly said he will not testify against Trump, a vow he repeated on Friday morning after he was charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his alleged attempts to establish a chain of communication between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which published emails stolen by Russian hackers during the 2016 election.

Stone told Congress he had no contact with two alleged intermediaries to WikiLeaks, when in fact, prosecutors showed, he was in frequent contact with both parties, including 30 text messages exchanged with one party on the very day Stone denied it.

“They’re right, I did forget on some occasions that I had text messages and emails – that are entirely exculpatory,” Stone told ABC. “I will prove in court that any failure of memory on my part was without intent and would be immaterial. I am human and I did make some errors but they’re errors that would be inconsequential within the scope of this investigation.”

Stone could spend years in prison if convicted, although such a sentence could be reduced if he cooperated with prosecutors, a step taken by others in the Russia inquiry including the former national security adviser Michael Flynn and deputy campaign chair Rick Gates.

Stone also told ABC he had not destroyed any evidence relevant to Mueller’s inquiries.

Apart from Stone’s apparent contacts with WikiLeaks, prosecutors have shown that campaign figures:

had hundreds of contacts with Russian operatives including discussions of US-Russia policy

held an in-person meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton

offered internal polling from the campaign to a Russian with links to military intelligence

and lied systemically about that activity, even as the Trump Organization pursued plans to develop a building in Moscow and Trump invited Russian hackers to target his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“It’s clear that Mueller’s work is not yet done,” Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, said in a separate interview on ABC. “We can see clues of that in the grand jury activity.”

A second figure identified by prosecutors as part of the alleged chain connecting the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, denied on Sunday that he had advance knowledge of what WikiLeaks planned to publish during the election about Clinton.

The denial contradicted evidence laid out in the Stone indictment, which refers to Corsi as “Person 1”. The indictment includes an email from Corsi to Stone in which Corsi claims knowledge of what “hackers” attacking the election intend to do and recommends coordinated action the Trump campaign should take – which the campaign subsequently took.

“Time to let more than [Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta] be exposed as in bed w/enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC,” the email, from 2 August 2016, reads.

“That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke – neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”

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Two weeks later, Trump began bringing up Clinton’s health on the campaign trail.

“To defeat crime and radical Islamic terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina,” he said in a speech in Wisconsin. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have that strength and stamina.”

Weeks later, WikiLeaks released an email between top Clinton campaign advisers in which one wrote: “Hard to think of anything more counter-productive than demanding Bernie’s medical records” – a reference to her primary opponent Bernie Sanders that the political right spun as proof that Clinton had a health secret to hide.

On Sunday, Corsi denied any contacts with WikiLeaks and said his reference in the email to Stone about Clinton’s health was just an educated guess.

“I did just connect the dots and figure it out on my own,” Corsi said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I admit that’s hard to accept … remarkably, often I’m correct.”

Whatever the inconsistencies in their public statements, Corsi and Stone remain staunch defenders of Trump – for now

“I don’t recall that Roger ever said that he was under instructions from anyone in the campaign” to contact WikiLeaks, Corsi said. “I’m not a human tape recorder … But I’m going to do my best to tell the truth.”