Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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And it's Stone's communications with a Russian hacker and his alleged communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that have put him in the crosshairs of the FBI as investigators look for connections between Trump's campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Stone says he has nothing to do with Russia, but messages he has sent to the hacker accused of a cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee, as well as Stone's own provocative statements, continue to raise questions. 

On August 12, nearly a year after he left Trump's campaign and a few weeks after WikiLeaks published the first set of stolen emails from the DNC, Stone reached out through a private message to a Twitter user named "Guccifer 2.0."

Earlier that August, Stone had written on the alt-right website Breitbart, then controlled by Steve Bannon, that it was "a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0" — and not the Russians — who hacked the DNC and fed the documents to WikiLeaks. But experts quickly linked Guccifer 2.0 back to Russia and concluded that the so-called hacker was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign.

In his messages with Guccifer 2.0, Stone asked if the hacker could retweet his Breitbart column about the 2016 presidential election possibly being "rigged." Guccifer 2.0 responded: "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." Stone later told Business Insider that the interaction he had with the hacker was so "brief and banal" that he "had forgotten it."

Stone's tweets in the days after his communications with Guccifer 2.0 have raised questions about whether he knew in advance that Podesta's emails would be imminently published by WikiLeaks. On August 21, Stone sent a series of famously prescient tweets. "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary." On October 1 Stone tweeted: "Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done."

On October 3 he tweeted: "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp." Four days later, WikiLeaks published its first set of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. 

In October, Stone said he had "back-channel communication with Assange," but has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, saying that he had been getting his information from a mutual friend he shares with Assange..

Who is Roger Stone and why is the FBI investigating him? - Business Insider