Mueller issues grand jury subpoenas to Trump adviser's social media consultant

[CousinIT]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued two subpoenas to a social media expert who worked for longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

The subpoenas were delivered late last week to lawyers representing Jason Sullivan, a social media and Twitter specialist Stone hired to work for an independent political action committee he set up to support Trump, Knut Johnson, a lawyer for Sullivan, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The subpoenas suggest that Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is focusing in part on Stone and whether he might have had advance knowledge of material allegedly hacked by Russian intelligence and sent to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it.

Stone appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee last September and denied allegations of collusion between the president’s associates and Russia during the election. “I am aware of no evidence whatsoever of collusion by the Russian state or anyone in the Trump campaign,” Stone told reporters at the time.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-mueller/mueller-issues-grand-jury-subpoenas-to-trump-advisers-social-media-consultant-idUSKCN1IH2OB

[Leghorn21]

1. Delightful news!! Thanks, IT!!

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Maybe they'll finally take down Stone, whom I watched on a special via Netflit, ...

Who played dirty politics. Why wouldn't someone look closer at this guy? He's a bullsh**er, plain and simple.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I want Stone to go down like...

like a stone! I hope he enjoys life in prison with the other dregs in this swamp.

[riversedge]

4. The squeeze gets closer to the Donald.

[Fritz Walter]

5. Oh yeah, they should shut down this investigation

Just as the plot (pun intended) thickens!

While many of us would like to see dozens more indictments between now and November 6, we need to be patient, and let the Mueller team build their iron-clad cases. Plural, because this involves many, many more than drumpf and his ill-begotten spawn. Many more.

Meanwhile, federal, state and local election officials need to exercise their due diligence and safeguard us from new — and probably more sophisticated —interference from Putin and his oligarchs, foreign and domestic.

Get.
Out.
The.
Vote.

Now, more than ever before!

[benld74]

6. #upcreeknopaddle

[BobTheSubgenius]

7. You don't think Roger Stone lied, do you?

Naaaaahhhhh

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. "an army of sophisticated, hyper-targeted direct tweet automation systems" - bots, in other words

“Welcome To The Age of Weaponized Social Media,” said a strategy document Sullivan prepared for Stone and seen by Reuters. He described a “system” he devised for creating Twitter “swarms” as “an army of sophisticated, hyper-targeted direct tweet automation systems driven by outcomes-based strategies derived from REAL-TIME actionable insights.”

For example, at 6:43 a.m. local time on Election Day in 2016, Trump tweeted, “TODAY WE MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN”. Trump’s message soon was retweeted more than 343,000 times, and in an interview last year, Sullivan told Reuters that the swarm helped overcome a surge in pro-Clinton social media postings and boost voter turnout for Trump.

The question is, did the Russians help set them up? Or supply the messages for them, or arrange the Twitter 'following' connections?

[dalton99a]

9. About time.