NY comedian says Roger Stone offered to help pay legal fees after ID’ing him as WikiLeaks source

Randy Credico, a New York comedian whom Trump ally Roger Stone says served as a backchannel for him and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, told Mother Jones that Stone offered last year to help pay his legal fees.

Credico told Mother Jones that Stone made the offer after telling the House Intelligence Committee that Credico served as the backchannel, which Credico has denied. Credico said he suspected that Stone didn’t want him to contradict his account of interactions between himself and Assange.

{mosads}“He knew that I was upset,” Credico said. “He wanted me to be quiet. He wanted me to go along with his narrative. He didn’t want me talking to the press and saying what I was saying.”

Stone, a longtime ally of President Trump, sent multiple tweets ahead of the WikiLeaks dump of the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) documents during the 2016 presidential race, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is now investigating whether Stone had any advance knowledge of the dump.

Stone told the House Intelligence Committee last fall that Credico was his go-between with Assange, prompting the committee to subpoena Credico.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, claiming diplomatic asylum.

Stone didn’t deny in an email to Mother Jones that he offered to help Credico, including by helping him find a job. He said he did so because he believed he cost Credico his job at a radio station by revealing his name to the Intelligence Committee.

“Any effort on my part to find work for Randy (something I have done over the years) was based on the fact that my decision to ultimately reveal his name to the House Intelligence Committee … would result in his termination at WBAI,” Stone said in the email. “It did.”

In an email on Wednesday, Stone told The Hill, “After I was compelled to reveal Randy Credico’s name to the House Intelligence Committee as the source who confirmed for me that WikiLeaks did have significant information on Hillary and would publish it, he was, as I feared, terminated from his job. It is for this reason that I offered to help him find work and assist in his legal expenses. At no time did I suggest he either assert his 5th Amendment rights or tell anything other than the truth to investigators. Any assertion to the contrary to the Grand Jury would be perjury.”

Credico has interviewed Assange multiple times over the years, including during the 2016 race.

Credico told Mother Jones that he ignored Stone’s offer to pay his legal fees.

The comedian was questioned in front of a grand jury earlier this month about his relationship with Stone and WikiLeaks as part of Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

This article was updated on Sept. 26 at 11:17 a.m.