After the arrest and indictment of Roger Stone on seven felony counts related to the ongoing Russia investigation by Robert Mueller’s special counsel, little was left to the public’s imagination as to whether or not information sharing between the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and Russia was coordinated at a high level — multiple statements in the charging documents indicate that Mueller’s office has proof of the direct connections.
But almost buried in the indictment — not purposely, but so insignificant a turn of phrase that you’d hardly notice it — is an even more damning statement than simply that Trump knew about the coordination between Stone, Julian Assange, and the Kremlin.
In fact, the phrase shows up no fewer than six times: “Senior Campaign Official.” It’s an unnamed person in the charging documents, like “Individual 1” was in the pages of the Michael Cohen indictment. But the significance is in the word “senior” — and in one instance, even the “senior” indicated isn’t the highest person up the food chain of events.
We already covered a couple of bombshell paragraphs in the Stone indictment just after it happened that showed the link between Trump and WikiLeaks:
By in or around June and July 2016, Stone informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had information indicating Organization 1 [WikiLeaks] had documents whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.
After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by [WikiLeaks], a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton Campaign.”
In the first paragraph there, it shows Stone going to someone or a group of someones high up in the campaign. In the second, it actually shows someone high up in the campaign taking direction from someone clearly even higher up the chain than themselves.
Either way, former Trump aide and friend of Roger Stone’s Sam Nunberg told Joy Reid on MSNBC’s AM Joy that he believes the “senior campaign official” could be Steve Bannon, or Rick Gates, or Paul Manafort — but that it’s also not impossible that the unnamed person could be Trump himself.
That would be a total game-changer.
Watch the exchange here:
Featured image via screen capture
