Prosecutors refute Roger Stone's claim that Russia has not pirated DNC

Federal prosecutors have directly denied for the first time on Friday, the extra-ordinary arguments presented by Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, that Russia may not have been responsible for hacking of the National Democratic Committee for 2016.

Stone, accused of obstructing the investigation by the House of Representatives of Russia, said in a document filed earlier this month that FBI investigators had appealed to a private company – CrowdStrike – to establish that Russia was behind the hacks and had not properly preserved the servers of the DNC. has regularly echoed on Twitter and in public statements.

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To back up his argument, Stone submitted affidavits from two former intelligence officials, who admitted that Russia was an unlikely source for the files, citing metadata, timestamps, and even time zone data to prove that the deletion of DNC files could come from the United States. . Stone claimed that if the evidence provided by Russia was wrong, the search warrant was used to indict him.

But prosecutors, who revealed that they had obtained 18 search warrants against Stone to support their charges, refuted the arguments with force Friday, targeting the two former intelligence officials cited.

"Even if these assertions were correct and well-founded (which they are not), they would not lead to the presumption that any statement of false claims that Russia led to piracy is false", wrote the US prosecutor Jessie Liu, Washington Attorney. followed up the case after special advocate, Robert Mueller, had begun his work.

"For example, allegations about timestamps and time signatures would be just as consistent with the fact that Russian intelligence officers are using a USB key to transfer pirated documents between themselves after hacking," the prosecutor wrote. "Similarly, the time zone analysis is entirely consistent with the fact that the victims were in the eastern daylight time zone, rather than providing information about the time zone. the location of the authors. "

In the end, they argue that Stone did not submit any evidence "suggesting that Russia was not involved in the hacking".

And prosecutors also pointed out that their search warrants against Stone would be valid even if his claims about the origin of piracy were true.

"[R]Statements about Russia's role played little or no role in the various probable cause determinations, which relied mainly on Stone's communications with individuals and entities who hacking or disseminating stolen material, "the prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said they had obtained their first search warrant against Stone in August 2017, more than a year before his indictment, and that they had obtained 17 more until February. 2019. Of these, 12 were signed by Washington District Court Judge Beryl Howell and three others. have been approved by other judges based in Washington, and three others by judges in New York and Florida.

Fourteen requests for search warrants indicate that Stone was in contact with hackers – known as Guccifer 2.0 – and that Guccifer 2.0 has finally claimed responsibility for the hacking of the DNC. And they also reported that WikiLeaks was broadcasting pirated emails and that Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks.

"Each affidavit argues that, based on these communications, it was likely that evidence of piracy of the DNC would be found at the specified location," they wrote. "Many of these affidavits contain additional evidence alleging a likely cause to believe that there will be evidence of additional crime violations"

Prosecutors also said they had a probable cause. Stone may have committed other crimes: complicity after the fact, contempt of a crime, conspiracy, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bans on foreign contributions.