SCOOP: Roger Stone met with a Russian promising dirt on Clinton during 2016 campaign, despite earlier denials. And…the Russian once claimed to be an FBI informant. By @RoigFranzia @PostRoz https://t.co/ZNIEbo9Qrw
— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) June 17, 2018
Happy Father’s Day, ya mutha– !
MIAMI — One day in late May 2016, Roger Stone — the political dark sorcerer and longtime confidant of Donald Trump — slipped into his Jaguar and headed out to meet a man with a “Make America Great Again” hat and a viscous Russian accent.
The man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, according to Stone, who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said.
“You don’t understand Donald Trump,” Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Fla. “He doesn’t pay for anything.”
Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who’d arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner.
“How crazy is the Russian?” Caputo wrote, according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted “big” money, Stone replied, “waste of time.”
Two years later, the brief sit-down in Florida has resurfaced as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s sprawling investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, according to Caputo. Caputo said he was asked about the meeting by prosecutors during a sometimes-heated questioning session last month.
Stone and Caputo, who did not previously disclose the meeting to congressional investigators, now say they believe they were the targets of a setup by U.S. law enforcement officials hostile to Trump.
They cite records — independently examined by The Post — showing that the man who approached Stone is actually a Russian national who has claimed to work as an FBI informant.
Interviews and additional documents show that Greenberg has at times used the name Henry Oknyansky. Under that name, he claimed in a 2015 court filing related to his immigration status that he had provided information to the FBI for 17 years. He attached records showing that the government had granted him special permission to enter the United States because his presence represented a “significant public benefit.”
There is no evidence that Greenberg was working with the FBI in his interactions with Stone, and in his court filing, Greenberg said he had stopped his FBI cooperation sometime after 2013.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller’s office.
The meeting took place two months earlier than federal officials have said a counterintelligence operation was officially opened and before WikiLeaks began releasing hacked Democratic emails…
There were so many Russian assets falling out of the trees, looking to help us! Who can remember every single dodgy contact among them?!?
Stone and Caputo clearly want the story to be about "Greenberg", but the interesting story seems to be the Ukrainian man that Greenberg brought with him. Whom Stone neglected to mention. https://t.co/5i1UYkmqxz
— zeddy (@Zeddary) June 17, 2018
Yes, I’m looking forward to Adam’s thoughts on this revelation, too.
The more I learn about Stone and his alleged political brilliance, the more I realize he's only been successful bc he's willing to lie, cheat, and subvert ethics wherever he can. Not sure I'd really consider that brilliance…
— Chapman (@MikeChapmoo) June 17, 2018
At least Rudy isn’t far enough gone that he tries to claim Stone was just some short-term volunteer who’d barely even met the candidate… yet:
GIULIANI, SHORTER: Roger Stone may have tried to collude with Russia, but I believe his effort was unsuccessful, so meh pic.twitter.com/kZKBxXEGoG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 17, 2018
Russiagate Open Thread: Roger Stone, Back in the SpotlightPost + Comments (150)