New text messages obtained by NBC News have confirmed that Roger Stone, an American political consultant and former Donald Trump adviser, got information about WikiLeaks' plans to release the Clinton campaign emails from New York radio host Randy Credico.
"Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary," Credico wrote on August 27, 2016, according to text messages extracted by Stone's lawyers from a cell phone their client stopped using in 2016.
On October 1, 2016 the radio host signaled: "Hillary's campaign will die this week."
This prompted Stone to tweet two days later that he had "total confidence" that Wikileaks and Julian Assange "will educate the American people soon."
In October 2017, Stone told the House Intelligence Committee that it was Credico who was his backchannel to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. He also emphasized that he had no idea about the content of the Clinton campaign emails or the source providing them.
For his part, Credico rejected Stone's allegations insisting that the political consultant was lying.
Referring to the text messages, Stone pointed out that the radio host apparently "lied to the grand jury" while denying being his back channel to Assange.
"These messages prove that Credico was the source who told me about the significance of the material that Assange announced he had on Hillary. It proves that Randy's source was a woman lawyer," Stone told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The messages also show that Credico provided updates on WikiLeaks to Stone on a regular basis.
However, speaking to NBC News on November 14, Credico downplayed the importance of the texts.
"There's absolutely nothing there that I had any knowledge of any thing that Assange was going to do because I didn't," he told the media outlet. "Where's the smoking gun?"
For his part, Stone's lawyer Grant Smith underscored "the texts provided to NBC News demonstrate that… Roger Stone, has been consistent for the past two years in his assertion that Randy Credico was the person who was providing him what limited information Mr. Stone had regarding WikiLeaks."
Citing people familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, MSNBC reported on October 23, 2018 that Stone had long been in crosshairs for possibly being an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks and potentially having advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release Podesta's emails.
