Stone defends contact with alleged DNC hacker

“I have this brief exchange with him on Twitter,” Stone told CNN on Sunday.

 

“To collude, I would have to have written him before,” he continued. “… We would need a time machine to collude.”

 

He told CNN that to suggest the interaction was anything else than a brief exchange would be a “fabrication.”

 

Stone admitted last week to having private conversations with a hacker known as Guccifer 2.0.

{mosads}Guccifer 2.0 is believed by the U.S. intelligence community to be a cover identity for Russian intelligence operatives. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential race, with an eye on helping elect President Trump.

Stone told The Washington Times last week that the conversations with the purported hacker were “completely innocuous.”

“It was so perfunctory, brief and banal I had forgotten it,” Stone told The Times.

He said he had exchanged a handful of messages with Guccifer 2.0 in the weeks after the hack of the DNC.

In one message from Aug. 14, Stone said he was “delighted” that Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account had been reinstated after a suspension.

In August, Stone tweeted: “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

Weeks later, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails were leaked to WikiLeaks.

Stone claimed he was referring to his “own research” about Podesta when he posted that tweet. He further added that the tweet “does not in any way prove I was foreshadowing,” according to CNN.

Stone was also asked about a tweet in October that promised: “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.” 

He said in response he had never had contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “either directly or indirectly.”