Degrees of Russian separation: Trump adviser Roger Stone’s hacker ties

We know that Russia played a role in the 2016 election. We also know that our president, Donald Trump, and his administration have extensive ties to the country.

It’s confirmed that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides’ emails were hacked by the Russian government in an effort to help elect Donald Trump. Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks, known hackers with ties to Russia, posted the stolen emails. And according to reports, Trump’s aides were in “constant communication” with Russian intelligence officials at this time.

But those aren’t the only Russian ties to Trump.

American Bridge has launched Trumpconnections.ru, a website that explains the myriad of connections between Donald Trump and associates from his Administration, campaign and business ventures to Russian oligarchs, gangsters, alleged spy-masters and Vladimir Putin.

Each week, we will examine someone who is part of the expanding web of connections between Donald Trump and the Putin agents responsible tampering with our election and threatening our national security.

So, today, let’s begin with Roger Stone, a former top adviser to the Trump campaign. Stone was a former lobbying partner with Paul Manafort, also the former Trump campaign manager, at their firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly.

During the 2016 election, Stone twice confirmed he was in contact with Wikileaks-founder Julian Assange and predicted release of hacked material about Clinton.

The FBI is currently investigating “intercepted communications and financial transactions” between Stone and Russian officials.

Most recently, Stone admitted he was in contact with “Guccifer 2.0,” who posted emails hacked from the DNC. This is the first time anyone from the Trump campaign acknowledge contact with a known hacker responsible for leaking the DNC’s emails.

What does this mean?

People with very close ties to Trump were in regular contact with Russian hackers who engaged in acts of cyber warfare on our country last year with the goal of tilting the election in Trump’s favor. That’s a serious attack on our democracy, and at minimum we deserve to know:

• How much did Trump know and when did he know it? and
• At what point does Russia’s influence over our president put us all at risk?