President Trump’s former campaign advisor Roger Stone has admitted to having conversations with the perpetrator behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Speaking to The Washington Times, Stone has added that his conversations with the hacker who is widely seen as the instigator and mastermind of the DNC hack, were “completely innocuous.”

After the hack of the Democratic National Committee in the lead-up to 2016’s US presidential elections, the pseudonymous entity ‘Guccifer 2.0’ surfaced. Taking after the original Romanian hacker Guccifer, the hacktivist – also a self-described Romanian – claimed that it was he who had compromised the DNC, rather than any Russian state-sponsored hackers. Further, Guccifer 2.0 said he had armed WikiLeaks with a number of documents that the whistle-blower website soon published the following month.

Meanwhile, Stone had written an article for Breitbart News, stating that the DNC breach was the work of Guccifer 2.0 instead of Russia, which experts had frequently pointed to. In the weeks that followed, Stone exchanged a number of direct messages with Guccifer 2.0 on social media platform Twitter. Stone had stated that he was “delighted” to see Twitter reinstate Guccifer 2.0’s account after a brief period of suspension.

Stone had also asked Guccifer 2.0 to retweet a column he had written for Brietbart about the elections being “rigged.”

Guccifer wrote back:

Wow. thank u for writing back, and thank u for an article about me!!! Do you find anything interesting in the docs I posted?

He added:

I’m pleased to say that u r great man. Please tell me if I can help u anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me.

At a time when the Trump administration is under fire for its purported ties to Russia, US authorities have reportedly obtained private messages sent between the two Twitter accounts as a part of a federal investrigation.

For his part, Stone told the Washington Times:

I myself had no contacts or communications with the Russian State, Russian Intelligence or anyone fronting for them or acting as intermediaries for them.

Even if [Guccifer 2.0] is/was a Russian asset, my brief Aug. 14 correspondence with him on twitter comes AFTER I wrote about his role in the DNC hacks (Aug 5) and AFTER Wikileaks released the DNC material,” Stone added on Friday. “How does one collaborate on a matter after the fact?”

“The content of the exchange is, as you can see completely innocuous and perfunctory,” Stone confirmed, adding that it was “so brief and banal” that he had forgotten all about it.

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