The Stone indictment also misleadingly omits crucial facts to make it appear as though Stone was trafficking in something other than public knowledge and wild guesses. According to the indictment, "During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about [WikiLeaks] and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign."
There it is! The smoking gun of collusion! Stone knew WikiLeaks was about to release more emails! How did he know this? Well, he might have watched Assange’s press conference on June 12, 2016, in which Assange announced, "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton...we have emails pending publication." Subtle, no?
The indictment goes on to state that Stone claimed to be an intermediary between Assange and the Trump campaign. Let’s stop right there for just a second. WikiLeaks released at least three batches of Clinton-related emails. The first was legally obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. WikiLeaks is not purely a Russian front trafficking in hacked documents.
The second batch originated in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server, stolen and then given to WikiLeaks. The third batch originated from a simple phishing scam of Clinton aide John Podesta. Those emails also found their way into WikiLeaks’ hands. It’s actually legal and constitutionally protected for a news outlet to publish stolen material. Thus, there’s nothing improper about a campaign seeking advance knowledge from the publishing outlet unless it can be shown that the campaign somehow coordinated with the thieves themselves.
The Clinton campaign had an agreement with Politico, for example, to send advance copies of Clinton stories to the DNC. Unlike the Politico/Clinton collusion, it does not appear that WikiLeaks coordinated at all with Stone.