Special counsel Robert Mueller is taking a look into late-night phone calls between President Trump and his former informal campaign adviser Roger Stone that were made in 2016, The Washington Post reported late Wednesday.
Trump and Stone spoke in a “series” of phone calls during the campaign, people familiar with the phone records told the Post.
{mosads}Mueller’s interest in the calls comes as he probes whether Stone acted as a go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks while WikiLeaks was publishing hacked Democratic emails.
Earlier this week, Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and Stone associate, provided a number of news organizations with charging documents from the special counsel that showed he told Stone in emails that WikiLeaks was planning a release of documents damaging for then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
One of those emails came on Aug. 2, 2016, the day before Stone had a phone call with Trump, according to the Post.
Stone told the newspaper that the WikiLeaks dump was not a subject he discussed on that phone call.
“It just didn’t come up,” Stone said. “I am able to say we never discussed WikiLeaks. I’m not sure what I would have said to him anyway because it’s all speculation … I just didn’t know if it’s true or not.”
Stone has also denied working with WikiLeaks and has repeated Trump’s criticism that the special counsel probe is a “witch hunt.”
WikiLeaks has been a central figure in Mueller’s investigation, and in July he charged 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee that pilfered the documents that were then published by WikiLeaks.
The calls from Trump would often show up on Stone’s phone as “unknown” on the caller ID, with Trump calling from a blocked number, according to the newspaper.
Stone also told the Post that his phone calls with Trump often came late at night because Trump “gets almost no sleep.”
“When Donald Trump calls you, he does most of the talking; you do most of the listening,” Stone said
Stone did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.
Trump attorney Jay Sekulow declined to comment to the Post on Trump’s calls with the veteran political operative.
“The president has responded to the questions asked by the special counsel,” Sekulow said. “We do not discuss those responses.”