Stone said his few exchanges with Guccifer 2.0 occurred in August after Twitter briefly banned the hacker for posting DNC information, proving he did not collude in the hack itself. The Smoking Gun website and The Washington Times first reported the direct messages between Stone and Guccifer 2.0 last month and published another piece on the exchanges Wednesday. Afterward, Stone released screen shots of the purported messages himself, posting them online in a blog post. In those messages, he said he was "delighted" to see Guccifer 2.0 reinstated after the hacking persona's brief banning by Twitter. Stone also said in the blog post that he also noted publicly on his Twitter account when the social media reinstated the Guccifer 2.0 "because I abhor censorship."

Source: CNN March 12, 2017 15:56 UTC