Top Trump confidant points to dubious report to justify conversation with Russian cyber spy

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September 26, 2017 6:06 PM

Roger Stone said he had a private conversation on Twitter with the person, nicknamed "Guccifer 2.0" last year.

President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser and longtime confidant Roger Stone testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, six months after admitting that he exchanged private messages with a hacker implicated in a massive cyberattack that targeted the Democratic National Committee last year.

Stone told Business Insider in March that he had a private conversation on Twitter with the person, nicknamed "Guccifer 2.0," and that the interaction was so "brief and banal, I had forgotten it."

"And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims," she wrote.

Guccifer 2.0, who has denied having any links to Russia. But digital fingerprints were left on the hacks that led the US intelligence community — as well as several private cybersecurity firms — to conclude that the cyberattacks were largely, if not entirely, carried out by two Russian intelligence groups.

Piecing together Guccifer's comments and cyber trails, experts soon began to agree that the self-proclaimed hacker was either a poser or the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. ThreatConnect,

For his part, Stone cast aside any suggestion that he may have collaborated with the DNC hackers, Russian or not, telling Business Insider months ago that he first noticed on August 14, 2016— after he'd written an article for Breitbart saying he thought Guccifer was "the real deal" — that a Twitter account that apparently belonged to Guccifer had been reinstated after a brief suspension.

"I wrote an article for Breitbart on August 5, 2016, in which I express my view that Guccifer 2.0 was not a Russian asset," Stone said in his statement for the House Intelligence Committee. "My only exchange with Guccifer 2.0 would begin on August 14, 2016, after my article appeared, and ran through September 9, 2016."

“Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done."

"I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp," he tweeted two days later.

Read Stone's full statement below:

Bryan Logan contributed reporting.

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