FBI special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone's 2016 claim he met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The antisecrecy website later released a trove of material on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton that U.S. officials say was hacked by Russian operatives, the Journal reported.
"I dined with Julian Assange last night," according to a copy of an email dated Aug. 4, 2016, and sent to former President Donald Trump adviser Sam Nunberg, the Journal reported.
Mueller's team has asked about Stone's email during testimony before a grand jury, the Journal reported, citing an unnamed source.
Stone, a longtime informal Trump adviser, had no official campaign role at that time.
Stone told the Journal the email was a joke.
"I never dined with Assange," he told the Journal, adding the email "doesn't have any significance because I provably didn't go . . . there was no such meeting. It's not what you say, it's what you do. This was said in jest."
Stone told the Journal he was flying out of Los Angeles the night before the email, putting him thousands of miles away from Ecuador's embassy in London, where Assange has been living in asylum since 2012.
WikiLeaks has previously tweeted Assange and Stone "never communicated," the Journal reported.
During the 2016 campaign, Stone indicated he was in direct contact with Assange and has said he communicated with him through an intermediary, according to the Journal. But he texted the Journal last Friday to say he never communicated with Assange, the news outlet reported.
Trump has repeatedly said there was no coordination between his campaign and the Russians.
A spokesman for Mueller's group declined to comment.
Stone left his official role with the Trump campaign shortly after it began in 2015. Trump has said he fired Stone; Stone has said he quit, the Journal reported.
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