Trump Ally Roger Stone Falls For Fake WikiLeaks Email
Written by Eric Hananoki
Published
Longtime Donald Trump ally and adviser Roger Stone fell for a fake WikiLeaks email which claimed that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta wrote that Hillary Clinton “smells of boiled cabbage, urine and farts.”
Stone tweeted out a link to the fake story on November 1:
Phew! .@HillaryClinton “rarely bathes-smells of boiled cabbage, urine and farts”…..@johnpodesta https://t.co/2K0oyrTqyw pic.twitter.com/M8ndRZW4IE
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) November 2, 2016
Stone’s link went to a site claiming that in a hacked WikiLeaks email, Podesta wrote that Clinton smells “of a combination of boiled cabbage, urine and farts. I’m guessing it’s either connected to her fall or simply the fact that she rarely bathes.”
The purported email is not real. As Snopes.com noted, the document is “fabricated” and “it was pretty simple to discern via WikiLeaks searchable archive that no such offensive e-mail exists.”
Stone tweeted hours later: “I’m told this is a parody. If it isn’t true it should be. Lighten Up Liberals.”
Stone said in August that he’s been in communication with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He later said that a “mutual friend” has “served as a back channel to give him broad tips in advance about WikiLeaks’ releases of emails.”
Stone regularly forwards false information. He recently had to retract his “breaking news” that Clinton secretly met with a Broward County, FL, election official in order to rig the election. Despite Stone having no credibility -- or perhaps because of it -- Trump has repeatedly relied on his research during this presidential campaign.
As CNN’s Brian Stelter noted, pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity yesterday also fell for a fake story that President Obama deleted endorsements of Clinton from his Twitter account.