#the main issue was that the people who got ahold of the website were people who wanted views

[unexpectedbrickattack]

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[placesthatchangedpeople]

Titus’s Diamond Ranch Academy testimony

I attended Diamond Ranch Academy (DRA) for 10 months from 2017-2018. My parents were lured and manipulated into sending and keeping there. I was well-liked for the majority of my stay but still would've rather been shot on the spot than attend this 'Treatment Center'.

My Experience [Simplified]:

Why was I there?

My family and I butted heads before DRA, and more so after.

Pros:

Got work experience in the kitchen.

Comically easy school-work boosted my GPA (The curriculum makes common core look amazing), (My GPA was a 3.6 before DRA).

Cons:

Harrassed almost daily (To be fair, this is the standard).

Constant fear of Physical harm, Rape, Harassment via human bi-product (Urine, Feces, and Semen are the main issues).

Contacted a disease at least once a month.

Physical harm or power abuse via staff (Staff are constantly being fired and are leaving because of how often this happens).

A constant sense of hopelessness as my parents were caught in these snakes trap.

Most of the food (They provide laxatives in medical because of this).

No contact with the opposite gender whatsoever.

Constant theft and damaging of personal items.

No access to music (Unless your child has been attending DRA for over 10months or has mental issues. Side note: If your child has mental issues they will for certain be harassed).

No access to [real] technology. (More on this later)

Many more...

[Simplified End]

Things to know before reading:

The Watches:

Note: All the watches are just detention in special clothing (Bumble Bee attire). This is not a joke, they put your kid in the same room where they put the kids who have been misbehaving and make them sit there for weeks at a time.

Suicide Watch: Suicide Watch is exactly what it sounds like, kids are watched more closely (not actually) so they do not kill themselves. The fact that kids try and kill themselves while they're here should raise some flags to you as a parent.

Run Watch: Run Watch is also exactly what it sounds like, if a kid of suspected of or has tried to run and been caught, they will be put on this watch. Many kids have been caught running, they have what they call bounty hunters to go and track down kids who have ran. The locals often help out when a kid tries to run, but not in defense of the kid. Every kid who ran while I was there was caught, brought back, and punished.

Gay Watch: Gay Watch is when your kid is caught having, or doing, sex/sexual things with/to another kid. I personally never saw it, but it was said you'd get a rainbow shirt.

My Experience:

The beginning of my DRA experience started with being kidnapped and driven to Utah. Luckily I got through this unscathed (I mention this because it's not uncommon for new kids to show up beaten or bruised). As soon as I got there, I was given a tour of my prison and assigned a therapist. My therapist immediately put me on Suicide Watch (SW) and Run Watch (RW) telling me it was because "I'm new" (Spoiler: this rarely happens and while I'm not 100% sure why I think it was just because he was having a bad day). They made me wear a yellow t-shirt, black shorts with no pockets, and flip-flops. We nicknamed this outfit "The Bumble-Bee". While I was a Bumble-Bee I got the joy of sitting in a classroom with all the 'bad kids' doing almost nothing for about a week. I say ALMOST nothing because they managed to get my scholarly agenda setup. I completed almost an entire quarter of most of my classes during that week (Remember what I said about the school-work being comically easy?).

After I was taken off the watches, I got to participate in regular DRA kid things. It only took me a day to be targeted and harassed by other DRA kids. I later learned this was a regular thing and didn't think much of it until after I left the place. This continued throughout my stay but wasn't really a problem as I was easily able to harass back, as most of the staff don't really care.

The regular weekday schedule is, wake up at 6:00-6:30 am, take morning medication if needed, eat breakfast, go to school until 3:00 pm (lunch is in the middle of the day), participate in clubs, sit and do nothing in dorms until dinner (this was supposed to be used for studying, but as I said, the school-work is comically easy), eat dinner, go upstairs and clean dorms and occasionally do non-dorm chores, Netflix and showers (if everyone had been behaving correctly, the staff love blanket punishment and if a kid in your dorm or a group of 8+ kids had been misbehaving would take your tv cord), then lights out at 9:00pm.

The weekend schedule is, wake up at 7:00, take medications if needed, eat breakfast, back to dorms for deep clean (an hour of dorm cleaning), after that, if we everyone was good, we could watch Netflix or do an activity until lunch. Activities included going to the weight room, basketball gym, and sometimes the field. Back to the schedule, from lunch, we would have nap time (people rarely napped), after naptime is benefit if you made it (more on that later) or if you didn't, detention until the end of the day or more Netflix until dinner, after dinner its Netflix and showers until bed at 10:00 (I think).

We did get some holidays off. Just not the whole week or anything close to that, just the day of the holiday. To give you an idea of what holidays are like; For Christmas, we got the day off, two boxes of cosmic brownies or oatmeal cream pies and assorted treats (total value of about 10$), played dodgeball and got to watch a movie in the commons area.

Notice how I haven't mentioned the barn/ranch yet. Even though the name of the place is called Diamond RANCH Academy and you are paying a minimum of 66,000$ [Maximum I believe is around 120,000$] for your kid to attend, they ask I think another 10,000$ per month for your kid to have access to the main gimmick of the place. On the topic of money let me go into what you'd be paying for.

The administration would have you think are paying for whatever problem with your teen you told them about to be solved. What you are actually paying for is very likely to be a huge waste of your teens time, detriment to your teens health, and massive detriment to your relationship with your teen. Why do I say this? Well, I have kept up with fellow DRA survivors and observed their lives as well as my own.

I keep up with about 87 of the about 130 people I attended DRA with via Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook. Out of the 87 I know, only 2 have stopped their drug usage (but both continue to use Marijuana) and are better versions of themselves (I must note when I asked them about it they told me it's not because of DRA, but because they decided themselves that they were going to stop). Of the 87, 59 of them said their relationships with their family had worsened and the other 28 (I could not get ahold of all 28 of them, probably not a good sign) had said their relationship was the same as when they left. The 85, in my opinion, have become worse versions of themselves then when I knew them at DRA. My own personal relationship with my family has worsened since my return from DRA.

Out of space so here are some important notes:

DRA kid testimonials on their website:

We are forced to smile in all pictures.

All of the kids giving video testimonials are bribed with treats and candies (highly valuable to us because we'd rarely get any), I know because I knew (and know) them and asked about it.

DRA testimonials on this website:

Not sure about all of them, but I find it highly suspicious that most of them are from California. Not going to name the one but there is one that says 'Trust the staff and program' which seems VERY suspicious to me. I'd say, if you do decide to send your kid here, trust your kid and read through the lines of what the admin will be telling you at the same time. Remember they are running a businesses and make money off of you sending and keeping your child there.

Administration Lies:

Note: Most aren't direct lies, just not full truths. Note: They will tailor what they tell you to you specifically

Example: There was a regular kid they tricked into coming, they told him DRA had school dances, access to phones, girls, and regular hikes.

DRA has a seasonal dance club, for girls campus only.

The Staff alone have access to smartphones and kids can rarely talk on wired phones, and only to family or people the family has cleared (Not an easy process, also they will usually hang you up if you try to tell them about how terrible DRA really is).

There are girls there. But they are on a whole separate campus, and you will be heavily punished if you get caught trying to or making contact with any of them and vice versa.

There are hikes, sometimes, for benefits (I never went on a single one).

They have an Ice-Cream Machine - They do, but it has been broken for years.

They have dogs, cats, horses, and more. - They do, but you have to pay the extra 10,000$ per month to access them.

They have Xbox - They do, but you have to progress pretty far into the program to get access, and the only games are Minecraft, StarWars Battlefront 2, Skyrim, Mirrors Edge, and Batman Arkham Night. All which you are not guaranteed to play and are likely to have to share with someone else.

I'm out of space, to sum this all up, if you have to send your kid anywhere, please consider somewhere else.

[dylanconrique]

Contact tumblr. They might be able to help you.

i’m not sure if that’d be possible. from what little information i looked into, once you’ve deleted your main account, there is no way of getting it back.9

+ tumblr staff are impossible to get ahold of, and i don’t trust the staffing team at all anymore, due to past experience of just the worst service with them.

you might remember -when i was @stydiea- tumblr wrongly flagged my account as sensitive, even though it was a purely fanbase blog, and there was nothing to suggest i was breaking any of the tumblr guidelines. tumblr’s “report system” or whatever you want to call it when things like this happens is completely fucked. you fill out a form to report your issues to the staffing team, and not an actual person?? if that makes sense. it’s, not like some other social media sites/apps, where they put you in line with an actual member of the staffing team. they just send it out to staff as a whole and are like, “we’ll contact you within the next couple of days!” and then never do. when my blog was flagged as sensitive i filled out multiple forms, multiple times to the staffing team and they never got back to me like they were supposed to. i even called the fucking company that owns tumblr in california, to see if i could get a phone number or email of an actual staffing person because i was so frustrated with the lack of communication, and they couldn’t even find that info for me.

it is for this reason that i lost faith in the people who run this website/app. and even if they were able to somehow restore my blog... i don’t see how they could restore all my posts with it as well. or at least all the original posts that i have originally made. and one of the things i am very upset about is loosing all my posts for a fanfic i was writing. a chenford pregnancy fanfic, and i just.... ugggh... i want it all back, but i don’t see how it’d be possible.

i appreciate the thought, but i think it’s safe to say, there’s no chance of me getting it all back. 😔😔

[orbemnews]

Annie’s Pledges to Purge a Class of Chemicals From Its Mac and Cheese Nearly four years after traces of chemicals believed to cause health problems in children and reproductive issues in adults were found in mass-market macaroni and cheese packets, Annie’s Homegrown has begun working with its suppliers to eliminate the offending material from their food processing equipment. The presence of the chemicals, called ortho-phthalates, rattled consumers who rely on the food staple, especially parents. Phthalates make rigid plastic more flexible material and are commonly used in tubing and conveyor belts found at food manufacturing plants and in food packaging. They can disrupt male hormones like testosterone and have been linked by some researchers to learning problems in children. But the plastics industry has argued that food products have been found to contain relatively small amounts of the chemicals, and food regulators have not ruled that they are dangerous to consumers. The 2017 study, which was funded by environmental advocacy groups and was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, discovered the chemicals in all 10 of the mac and cheese varieties it tested, though the brands were not identified. Annie’s, known by its cute bunny logo, disclosed its move in a statement on its website, saying the company was working “with our trusted suppliers to eliminate ortho-phthalates that may be present in the packaging material and food processing equipment that produces the cheese and cheese powder in our macaroni and cheese.” In a statement, a spokeswoman for General Mills, which owns Annie’s, said, “We are committed to learning more to better understand this emerging issue and determine how Annie’s can be a part of the solution.” The economic and practical reality of trying to root out phthalates, which can be found in many parts of the food manufacturing process, could be daunting. The chemicals could enter the food in many places along the supply chain, including at the farm, where flexible plastic tubes carry milk from the barn, or in the making of the cardboard container that holds the noodles. The chemicals tend to collect in foods with a high fat content, such as cheese. Committing to purge phthalates from the manufacturing of one food type raises questions about the chemical content of the myriad other products made with similar flexible plastic equipment. Still, health advocates applauded General Mills for taking this step with Annie’s, one of its signature brands. General Mills bought Annie’s in 2014, and its popularity has skyrocketed during the pandemic as homebound consumers turn to packaged food. “People shouldn’t have to eat chemicals in their food when it could make them sick, especially where there are safer alternatives,” said Mike Belliveau, the executive director of Defend Our Health, an environmental and health advocacy group focused on the dangers of phthalates. Mr. Belliveau’s group, which formerly called itself the Environmental Health Strategy Center, helped fund the study in 2017 that revealed the existence of the chemicals in the food. Since then, he has reached out to giant food companies such as General Mills and Kraft about phthalates. Only General Mills opened a discussion with his group about phasing out the chemicals from its supply chain, he said. (Kraft did not respond to a request for comment for this article.) “Annie’s has updated the language on their website to our new external commitment,” Lee Anderson, a General Mills executive, wrote to the advocacy group in a December email that was viewed by The New York Times. “We are not planning any additional communications, nor seeking any.” “While we appreciate that this is important for some consumers, it is not the focus of most of our consumers during these difficult times as we seek to reassure them about the basic availability and value of our products,” the email continued. Mr. Anderson added that Annie’s had been discussing how to implement the changes with suppliers and was developing a “supplier confirmation tool” but that it would take time to assess its effectiveness. Other companies have taken steps to limit the chemicals in their packaging, including Taco Bell, which has pledged to remove phthalates from its packaging by 2025. Ahold Delhaize U.S.A., which operates grocery chains such as Stop & Shop and Hannafords, announced a “sustainable chemistry commitment” to restrict phthalates in its private label products. Maine will begin banning food packages that contain phthalates “in any amount greater than an incidental presence” starting in 2022. But other than Annie’s, few companies have publicly committed to removing phthalates from the manufacturing process. The Organic Trade Association is convening a task force this winter to begin looking at how to help its members deal with the issue. “But they need packaging and suppliers along there with them,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, the trade group’s vice president of regulatory and technical affairs. Phthalates have powerful defenders, including Exxon Mobil, a leading producer of the chemical. The chemical industry dismisses some of the studies into phthalates in food as “bad science” designed to generate alarmist headlines but not grounded by rigorous research. Kevin Ott, the executive director of the Flexible Vinyl Alliance, a trade group that includes Exxon, said many consumers and advocates are too quick to condemn certain substances. “Any chemical you can’t see, smell or spell has got to be dangerous,” he said. Mr. Ott criticized how some studies have measured the presence of phthalates in macaroni and cheese in parts per billion. “It’s like a thimble in an Olympic-size swimming pool,” he said. In 2008, Congress restricted many phthalates from use in children’s toys and directed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to study the effects of several other phthalates. Today, after all the scrutiny, “phthalates have been basically phased out of toys,” Mr. Ott said. “No astute business person is going to make toys with phthalates.” Food is a different story. The Food and Drug Administration has studied the presence of phthalates in food packaging and manufacturing equipment. In a paper published in 2018, a group of the agency’s researchers concluded, “There have been no studies to date which show any connection between human dietary exposure to phthalates and adverse health effects.” But the F.D.A. has not yet officially ruled on the issue, even though researchers say food is a major area of concern. “Phthalates are coming into our body through our skin, through our nose — we get them from everywhere,” said Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has studied the chemical’s effect on reproductive health. “But the primary source is food.” In a statement, an F.D.A. spokeswoman said the agency was currently reviewing two petitions, including one filed by several environmental groups five years ago that asks regulators to restrict phthalates from “food contact” materials. “Completing our review of these petitions and publishing our response in the Federal Register is a priority for the F.D.A.,” the agency said on Friday. In a book being published this month, “Count Down,” Dr. Swan argues that a range of chemicals have contributed to a 50 percent decline in sperm counts over the past 40 years and that exposure to certain phthalates may be playing a role in reproductive problems. “This alarming rate of decline could mean the human race will be unable to reproduce itself if the trend continues,” Dr. Swan writes in the book. These issues are not caused by “something that is inherently wrong with the human body, as it has evolved over time,” she writes. Source link Orbem News #Annies #Cheese #Chemicals #Class #Mac #Pledges #Purge

[housebeleren]

Theros Beyond Death Odds & Ends Part 2

Just when I thought we’d gotten most or all of the info we were going to get on Theros Beyond Death before the holidays, a couple more tidbits were dropped. And the Magic community (and I) have thoughts about them.

Theme Booster Rares

First up, we have the announcement of the Theros Beyond Death Theme Boosters. Normally, I’ve given literally zero thought to these, but this time, there are changes. 10 rares, two of each color, that will be possible pulls in the Theme Boosters. Of them, a few seem potentially interesting for Brawl & Commander, particularly the three below.

Once these were previewed, the opinions came in rapidly, and from what I’ve seen, the feelings are generally quite negative, mainly regarding the distribution method. I confess that I am... torn.

On the one hand, I understand the theory behind these cards. Every set has some number of cards that are designed for Commander, and don’t particularly fit into the set itself. Think Clone Legion in Dragons of Tarkir or Indomitable Creativity in Aether Revolt. These cards are basically unplayable in Limited,  rarely find uses in Standard or other Constructed formats, and end up effectively being whiffs when opened in normal boosters. As Commander has grown in popularity, so has Wizards’ need to create more cards geared towards it. Putting these cards in the main set would warp Limited too much, so an ancillary product is really the main option that makes sense.

On the other hand, this contributes further to the issue I was mentioning in my last post, which is that it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep track of the cards in a given set and how to get ahold of them. Additionally, every card printed not in the main set has the possibility of being the next Nexus of Fate, not intended for major Constructed play that suddenly finds itself a $50 card as the lynchpin of a Standard archetype. We’re seeing this with Korvold, who’s spiked up in the last month as he’s found Standard play, and it’s likely that there will be more. If these cards end up being very limited in supply and the single prices are high, it’ll end up being a major feel bad.

I’ll just say for me, the jury’s still out on this one. If the supply of these is very small and I have to shell out more than a couple bucks to get the ones I want, it will be very frustrating. And let’s be clear, I am NOT at all interested in actually purchasing the Theme Boosters, just to end up with piles of Commons. (Seriously, you get SO MANY Commons. The chaff abounds.) But if they are readily available for reasonable prices, it may turn out that people are being too preemptively critical of this move.

Either way, I do think Wizards needs to do some simplification of the product lines. Shit’s getting confusing AF.

Theros Beyond Death Story

Thennnnn there was this little drop: Theros Beyond Death Story on Cards

In particular, “Note that for Theros Beyond Death, there are currently no plans for an ebook, so make sure to check out this page throughout preview season.”

And, as confirmed by the good people at Hipsters of the Coast, there are no plans for MTG web fiction either.

This is, to put it mildly, disappointing. After several years of solid story presentation with tight connections to the set design (Tarkir-M19, to be specific), this past year has been one misstep after another. 

A Brief Digression

First up in the past year, Guilds of Ravnica & Ravnica Allegiance have basically no story whatsoever, though the “life on Ravnica” bits of web fiction were enjoyable, if tangential. The greatest shame of this is that Django Wexler “The Gathering Storm” series is truly a fun read, and was well-integrated with the corresponding sets, but probably failed to get high readership due to the super-delayed and bizarre method of distribution. Fortunately you can read all of it HERE, and I highly encourage you to do so, because these were honestly my favorite MTG stories since M19.

Despite the lack of lead-in lore, War of the Spark had the benefit of having probably the most story-engaged player base Magic has had in years, thanks in large part to a truly outstanding and honestly game-changing trailer. Then it succeeded in squandering virtually all of it by presenting a mediocre book (which failed to deliver on a number of preset plot points, such as the Jace/Vraska mind-erasure scheme) and a set of cards that was largely incongruous with the corresponding book beyond the most rudimentary of plot points. 

Dack Fayden not getting a card despite being a major viewpoint character in the book? That card where Liliana confronts Bolas and defeats him with the Chain Veil that didn’t actually happen? And there are countless other similar examples. I get it, these things happen, and as has been pointed out many times, the timelines involved in MTG’s card set creation don’t line up well with the story timelines. 

But at the end of the day, it was unsatisfying. Magic is a brand, it is a business. And the end result of all the hype of War of the Spark? I felt let down, less interested, and less invested in the brand than I did before. To be absolutely clear, I have purchased less sealed product from Standard sets, participated in fewer draft events, and consumed less MTG related content since War of the Spark than in the 3-4 years leading up to it. And I know I am not alone. The story matters, because for huge segments of the playing population, it is a critical way in which we connect to the cards, aka the product. Without that connection, it becomes *just* a game, and there are tons of games out there.

These feelings were amplified by the complete absence of story from M20, an otherwise excellent core set, the decision to make the Wildred Quest (which I have heard is excellent) only available as an e-book (a format I do not typically engage with), and the total and utter clusterfuck that was War of the Spark: Forsaken. (Don’t take my word for it, take The Professor’s.)

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Which brings us to now. Theros Beyond Death is coming up. Standard, despite being better since the recent bannings, is failing to draw interest. Tournament attendance is down.

Magic needs story right now. 

Magic needs something compelling to remind its fanbase why this is a property worth being invested in. We have the imminent and triumphant return of one of Magic’s most beloved heroines and..... we’re not going to get any story for it? It’s just going to be the cards and some synopsis on the website? 

Why should I care?

Believe me when I say I would rather there be no story at all than have some poorly-written and problematic word vomit the likes of which we got this year. But I can’t help but reiterate how disappointing this turn of events is. My honest and sincere hope is that Wizards (and Hasbro) have learned that the answer doesn’t lie in trying to monetize Magic fiction through hastily-written books or by placing it behind paywalls. After this last year, I’m going to be very hesitant to spend money on Magic story going forward.

Instead, let people who love and cherish these characters write the story, give them time in advance to do it, then offer the story freely to the fans. Return to the method we had in the glory years of Magic’s story, which was really not that long ago, and the stories will monetize themselves. This is because the fanbase will be bought in again, and they will therefore be invested again. At least I will. 

Here’s hoping.

[theconservativebrief]

New reports indicate special counsel Robert Mueller remains intensely focused on longtime political consultant and lobbyist Roger Stone, as he has for many months now. But why?

Since at least February, the special counsel’s team has subjected at least 10 people to detailed questioning about the political operative and longtime Trump ally. They’ve asked about Stone’s finances, his political groups, and anything Stone might know about WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, hacked material, and Russian interference generally.

This has been the leakiest subplot of the Mueller investigation to date — because many witnesses who have gone been in to be questioned about Stone have gone right out and told reporters what the special counsel’s team asked them.

As a result, a plethora of articles keeps revealing new tidbits about what Stone-related topic Mueller is apparently interested in. This week alone, we’ve heard of the special counsel’s team asking about Stone’s 2016 conference calls, his emails with former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon, and his contacts with conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

Yet despite all these leaks, the full explanation for Mueller’s keen interest in Stone remains obscure. There’s still no public smoking gun evidence proving Stone was involved in the leak of the hacked Democratic material. And it’s not entirely clear what crime, if any, Stone might be on the hook for. We appear to be missing part of the story — maybe a lot of the story.

One conclusion we can draw, though, is the special counsel seems to know something that has convinced him that talking to many people around Stone is a worthwhile use of his resources. It could relate to documentary evidence that hasn’t yet leaked. It could relate to what cooperators like Rick Gates and now Paul Manafort have told investigators. But we likely won’t get the full story unless, or until, Mueller decides to file new charges.

Roger Stone is a legendary Republican “dirty trickster” operative who’s known Trump since the 1980s, advised him off and on over the years, and worked briefly for Trump’s presidential campaign in its earliest months, before departing to help his candidacy from the outside. Last year, he was mentioned from time to time as a person under scrutiny in the Trump/Russia probe in 2017 — but Mueller’s focus on him really seemed to intensify in the beginning of 2018.

Since then, Mueller has questioned at least 10 people extensively about Stone. They include some people who were are part of Trumpworld — but also many who are not, and who are of interest solely because of their connection to Stone himself:

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign staffer who’d worked with Stone for years until they had a falling out, was subpoenaed by Mueller in February. Nunberg at first said he’d refuse to testify, but eventually did so. “They want me to testify against Roger,” Nunberg complained beforehand. “They want me to say that Roger was going around telling people he was colluding with Julian Assange.”

Ted Malloch, a UK-based Trump supporter and author, was questioned by Mueller’s team about Stone, WikiLeaks, and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi in March.

Michael Caputo, a longtime close Stone associate and former Trump campaign staffer, was questioned in early May.

Jason Sullivan, John Kakanis, and Andrew Miller, three people involved in Stone’s 2016 political work, were all subpoenaed in May. The first two went in for questioning, but Miller has so far refused to, instead filing a lawsuit challenging Mueller’s authority as special counsel. (An appellate panel will hear arguments on his case on November 8.)

Kristin Davis, the former “Manhattan Madam” who’d also done political work with Stone, was subpoenaed by Mueller in July, and went in for grand jury testimony in August.

Randy Credico, a radio host who Stone claimed was his intermediary with Julian Assange, was subpoenaed in August and testified in September.

Jerome Corsi, a conservative writer and conspiracy theorist who questioned President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and wrote for the website Infowars, was subpoenaed and went in for testimony in September. ABC News reported Wednesday that Corsi is returning for another grand jury appearance, and that he is becoming “a central figure of interest to Mueller.”

Steve Bannon, who had already been questioned by Mueller’s team back in January, returned in late October for another round of questioning which reportedly focused on Stone.

And those are just the names we know — Mueller’s team has likely questioned more people whose names haven’t become public.

In the midst of this, Mueller turned two Trump allies who know Stone into cooperating witnesses, and has reportedly asked them about him.

Rick Gates started cooperating with the special counsel in February, and CNBC later reported that Mueller was questioning witnesses about meetings and dinners that Gates and Stone both attended.

Paul Manafort started cooperating in September, and ABC News soon reported that Mueller was “pushing” Manafort “for information on Roger Stone.” (Manafort and Stone have been friends for decades and co-founded a lobbying and PR firm together back in the 1980s.)

Mueller also wants to question somebody else about Stone: President Donald Trump. Among the topics the special counsel’s team listed for an interview with Trump back in March, per notes from Trump’s lawyers, was: “What did you know about communication between Roger Stone, his associates, Julian Assange or WikiLeaks?”

Meanwhile, in all these months the special counsel’s team has still never even reached out to Stone himself. When federal investigators are quizzing everyone around you about you, but not talking to you at all, that’s … not a great sign. (Mueller similarly avoided reaching out to question Manafort and Gates before he indicted them.)

The witnesses questioned about Stone have generally told reporters that they thought Mueller’s main interest was sussing out potential connections between Stone and WikiLeaks.

Mueller has alleged that, in March 2016, Russian intelligence officers hacked Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails. Seven months later, on October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began posting batches of those emails online, and would continue to do so up until the election.

There are many unanswered questions about how what happened in between — most notably, how exactly the Podesta emails got to WikiLeaks, and whether any Trump associates were involved in or informed about this or other hacked material.

But in the two months or so before the Podesta email release, Roger Stone said a lot of interesting things. He publicly claimed to have “communicated with Assange.” He talked about an intermediary of his who’d met Assange. He hyped the release of new WikiLeaks content related to Clinton. And he ominously tweeted, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”.

In private, he made similar intimations. He told Sam Nunberg that he’d “dined with my new pal Julian Assange.” Asked by Breitbart’s Matt Boyle if what Assange had on Clinton is “good,” Stone answered, “It is,” and suggested he wanted to tell Steve Bannon about it. In subsequent emails with Bannon, he then claimed to know what Assange was thinking. And as late as this year, Stone was trying to get Trump to pardon Assange.

Since then, Stone has tried to put forward innocent explanations for all of this. He’s suggested that he was joking and bullshitting in many of these claims, such as dining with Assange. He’s said that his contacts with Assange were only through an intermediary, radio host Randy Credico, and that he was often just repeating what Assange himself had said publicly. And he’s said the Podesta tweet was about an unrelated matter.

But his denials have often shifted. Just this week he said he’d never communicated with Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks, and the next day his emails with Bannon about Assange emerged. And previously, Stone and WikiLeaks both claimed they’d never directly communicated, but the Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand got ahold of Twitter DMs they’d exchanged a few days after the Podesta emails went up.

Still, there remains no public proof that Stone knew anything specific about the Podesta hack or Assange’s plans. There’s a lot of vague, shady hinting from someone who has a reputation of being a bullshitter. There’s not yet a smoking gun, so far as we know. But something is likely motivating Mueller to focus so intently on this.

Yet despite the frequent speculation that Mueller will soon indict Stone, nobody seems to be sure on exactly what he’d be indicted for. It doesn’t seem that just talking with hackers would be a crime. Whatever Stone did would likely have to clear a pretty high bar, both in terms of evidence and seriousness, to justify an indictment for something like conspiracy. (Marcy Wheeler lays out several interesting possibilities in this post at EmptyWheel)

There are issues beyond WikiLeaks, too, that Mueller could be interested in. Stone had other shady contacts — with the Russian intelligence-run Twitter account “Guccifer 2.0,” and a Russian calling himself “Henry Greenberg” who’d offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. We’ve heard less about these in recent leaks from the people questioned about Stone lately, though. Then there is the web of political groups Stone deployed on Trump’s behalf — Mueller has been scrutinizing their finances, which could raise campaign finance issues.

But as for WikiLeaks and Podesta, it will be interesting to see what happens with Jerome Corsi in the days to come. According to NBC News, Mueller’s team has evidence suggesting Corsi — a Stone associate who had worked for the fringe website Infowars — knew in advance that Podesta’s emails had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks. Furthermore, there are other messages “in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails,” the NBC reporters continue.

If this is accurate — and we haven’t seen the underlying evidence — it could be the missing link showing Stone did know about Podesta’s hacked emails specifically in advance. That would be a major revelation, connecting Trump’s circle to nonpublic knowledge about Russia-hacked material for the first time. However, Corsi is anything but a reliable source (he’s a longtime conspiracy theorist who helped create birtherism). In any case, Mueller is calling him back in for more questioning Friday.

Original Source -> Robert Mueller sure still is interested in Roger Stone

via The Conservative Brief