? Mueller has subpoenaed Roger Stone's social media consultant, Reuters reports https://t.co/8FotRG1Nld pic.twitter.com/mZEZYSZn2a
— David S. Joachim (@davidjoachim) May 16, 2018
JUST IN: Robert Muller issues grand jury subpoenas to Trump adviser's social media consultant.
"This suggests that Robert Mueller is honing in on Roger Stone and whether he had advanced knowledge that the Russian's had hacked Democratic emails." pic.twitter.com/567myX7Yr2
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 16, 2018
Have said it before, will no doubt say it again: There are few arrests that would make me happier than that of Roger Stone, foundational Repub ratfvcker going back to Nixon’s maladministration. And for the unsubtle scripting of Murphy the Trickster God, few incidents that would make a better story arc…
… Stone appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee last September and denied allegations of collusion between the president’s associates and Russia during the election. “I am aware of no evidence whatsoever of collusion by the Russian state or anyone in the Trump campaign,” Stone told reporters at the time.
According to sources familiar with the ongoing investigation, Mueller also has been probing whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign may have helped Assange or the Russians time or target the release of hacked emails and other social media promoting Trump or critical of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton…
Sullivan told Reuters that he heads Cyphoon.com, a social media firm, and “worked on the Trump campaign serving as Chief Strategist directly to Roger J. Stone Jr.”
“Welcome To The Age of Weaponized Social Media,” said a strategy document Sullivan prepared for Stone and seen by Reuters. He described a “system” he devised for creating Twitter “swarms” as “an army of sophisticated, hyper-targeted direct tweet automation systems driven by outcomes-based strategies derived from REAL-TIME actionable insights.”
For example, at 6:43 a.m. local time on Election Day in 2016, Trump tweeted, “TODAY WE MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN”. Trump’s message soon was retweeted more than 343,000 times, and in an interview last year, Sullivan told Reuters that the swarm helped overcome a surge in pro-Clinton social media postings and boost voter turnout for Trump…
And, yes, Stone has always denied being anything more than “an old friend of Donald’s”…
Jason Sullivan, whom Reuters is reporting was subpoenaed by Mueller's team, says he "Worked on Trump 2016 campaign serving as 'Chief Social Media Strategist directly to Roger J Stone Jr.'" in his Twitter bio.
So… Roger Stone was a member of the Trump campaign now? pic.twitter.com/XJikMeBEJj
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 16, 2018
i suspect there may be more here than meets the eye https://t.co/TefSziorPx via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2018
Politico helpfully adds:
… Mueller’s office, which declined to comment about the grand jury subpoenas to Sullivan, has signaled interest in Stone through its questioning of several of his longtime associates. Two former Trump campaign aides, Michael Caputo and Sam Nunberg, have said they were asked about Stone during their interviews with the special counsel’s team. The president’s personal lawyers also included Stone among a long list of potential topics that Trump should prepare to be asked about if he sits with Mueller’s team for an interview, according to a New York Times report last month.
In an email to POLITICO, Stone called Sullivan “a great salesman who worked for me for a couple of months as a social media consultant. As far as I know all of his social media activities work was perfectly legal.” He added that Sullivan had access to his Twitter feed while working for his super PAC…
Stone, one of the youngest members of President Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, formed his super PAC in fall 2015 just a few months after he left Trump’s presidential campaign. (Trump at the time said he fired his longtime political adviser, though Stone insisted he quit.) The group faced immediate controversy when Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager at the time, told The Hill newspaper that he’d sent a cease-and-desist letter and slammed the super PAC’s work as a “big-league scam.”
But Stone persisted, spending nearly all of the $587,000 the super PAC raised during the 2016 election cycle, according to FEC campaign data compiled by OpenSecrets.org…
Some people say that Roger has managed to stay out of jail all these years due to a preternatural talent for being the first in every criminal conspiracy to turn state’s evidence. Be a certain poetic justice if he ends up in a cell because his most recent totally-not-a-fellow-conspirator Assange sells Stone done the river, deliberately or not.
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