House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) suggested that there are only a few people who could have been directing Roger Stone, which turns attention to Trump and Jared Kushner.
Rep. Schiff said on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports:
My immediate reaction is that very paragraph that you’re focused on, which is that someone directed a senior campaign official to reach out to stone, to find out about future releases. How many people could direct a senior campaign official? And that language of direction we’ve seen in other indictments before, referring to individual 1 directing the campaign finance fraud scheme, for example. So there’s probably a very select number of people that are in a position to do that.
And also, the chronology of all this, that you have these private efforts to find out about these stolen e-mails and the publishing arm of the Russians, which is Wikileaks, as well as guccifer 2, at the same time that the president is calling for Russian help in hacking Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, after Russians communicated that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton, were offering to help the Trump campaign in the setup to that Trump Tower New York meeting. And of course, you’ve got the contacts that the Russians had through intermediaries with George Papadopoulos when they informed the campaign they had Hillary’s e-mails. You all see this as part of a big picture coming together, additional pieces being placed in the puzzle.
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Video:
Adam Schiff really narrows it down on who was directing Roger Stone. https://t.co/jl7nUqPafZ pic.twitter.com/tMYvUrlyxg
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 25, 2019
Individual 1 in the Michael Cohen campaign finance fraud scheme is Donald Trump. The president was directing Michael Cohen, and it makes equal sense to suspect that he was also directing Roger Stone. Of course, Trump doesn’t use email, so the person on the other end of emails is likely Jared Kushner. Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were not senior campaign officials. The Wikileaks events happened before Manafort and Kellyanne Conway.
The Trump campaign was very small. Jared Kushner was running the campaign, so even though Rep. Schiff never said it, it is clear that the chairman has strong suspicions about who was directing Roger Stone.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
