A top adviser to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday accused a longtime Donald Trump aide of receiving “advance warning” about WikiLeaks’ plans to publish thousands of hacked e-mails and suggested the Republican candidate is aiding the unprecedented Russian interference in US politics.
Clinton adviser John Podesta pointed the finger at Trump adviser Roger Stone, who he said has been in touch with WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange.
Podesta also raised as evidence an August tweet in which Stone said Podesta’s “time in the barrel” was coming.
The tweet was sent shortly after WikiLeaks published scores of hacked e-mails from other Democratic officials.
“I think it’s a reasonable assumption, or at least a reasonable conclusion, that Mr Stone and the Trump campaign had advance warning about what Assange was going to do,” Podesta told reporters aboard the Clinton campaign airplane.
Podesta acknowledged the evidence was “circumstantial.”
Stone, in an e-mail to The Associated Press late on Tuesday, called Podesta’s assertion “categorically false” and “without foundation.” Podesta confirmed that the FBI is investigating the hack of his private e-mail account as part of the ongoing probe in other Democratic Party hackings by groups with Russian ties.
Last week, intelligence officials said they believe the individuals responsible are working for Russian intelligence and coordinating with Assange on the political hacking.
Podesta said Russia’s actions might be driven by Trump’s policy positions, which he said are more in line with Russian foreign policy than US foreign policy.
However, he also suggested the driving force could be “Mr Trump’s deep engagement and ties with Russian interests in his business affairs.”
Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak dismissed the accusations as untrue.
“We are watching very carefully the election campaign in this country,” Kislyak said on Tuesday at a discussion of bilateral affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s campus in Washington. “We don’t interfere [in] the internal affairs of the US, neither by my statements nor by electronic or other means.”
Clinton has repeatedly accused her opponent of being soft on Russia, pointing to his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, his suggestion that he would rethink sanctions against Russian officials, his sharp criticism of NATO and other policy positions.
While Podesta did not directly accuse Trump of assisting with Russia’s meddling with US campaigns, he suggested Trump was either “willfully ignoring” intelligence officials’ warnings about Russian government involvement or “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
The Clinton campaign would not confirm the authenticity of Podesta’s leaked e-mails, only saying that Russian hackers often fabricate documents.
“The pattern is they hack, they leak truthful things, and then they build up to leaking documents that are either doctored or wholly fabricated,” Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri said.
Trump seized on the hacked e-mails at a rally Tuesday night in Florida, alleging the documents show that “Clinton is the vessel [of] a corrupt global establishment that’s raiding our country and surrounding the sovereignty of our nation.”
Also citing WikiLeaks, Trump said: “The [US] Department of Justice fed information to the Clinton campaign about the e-mail investigation so that the campaign could be prepared to cover up for her crimes. What is going on?”
In May last year, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon alerted staffers that the Justice Department was proposing to publish Clinton’s work-related e-mails by January in response to requests by news organizations.
Still, Trump said: “This is collusion and corruption of the highest order and is one more reason why l will ask my attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor,” following up on his debate threat to put Clinton in jail.
WikiLeaks dropped the first batch of Podesta’s e-mails shortly after news organizations released a video in which Trump is heard making sexually predatory comments about women.
That video has deeply damaged Trump’s campaign, leading several Republicans to revoke their support for the businessman.
Podesta said Tuesday the timing of his e-mails’ release was an “awfully curious coincidence.”
“Mr Assange wanted to change the subject,” Podesta said. “He didn’t succeed in doing that.”
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