Jerome Corsi Reportedly in Plea Negotiations with Mueller's Team
Jerome Corsi, a right-wing author linked to Trump confidant Roger Stone, is negotiating with the special counsel’s office about a possible plea deal, The Washington Post reported.
It is unclear when Corsi began negotiating with the special counsel or what crimes would be included in any plea agreement. Corsi has appeared twice before a grand jury being used in the investigation, which is being led by Robert Mueller.
Corsi’s attorney, David Gray, declined to comment when reached by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A former correspondent for InfoWars, Corsi announced on Nov. 12 that Mueller’s team informed him that he would be indicted for making false statements to prosecutors or during his two appearances before the grand jury.
Prosecutors are interested in Corsi’s interactions with Stone and an American academic named Ted Malloch. They want to know whether any Trump associates had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release emails that were stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, began releasing the emails on Oct. 7, 2016.
Corsi claimed that he neither met Assange nor had inside information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release Podesta emails. But in an interview with The DCNF on Nov. 13, Corsi said he began telling associates as early as August 2016 that he believed that WikiLeaks had possession of Podesta’s emails.
“I was telling people as early as August, I thought Assange had Podesta emails, and I thought he was going to drop them in October,” said Corsi, who claims he came up with a theory about the emails on his own.
One person Corsi says he believed he told is Stone. But Stone, who met Corsi in 2015, vehemently denies speaking to Corsi about Podesta emails.
“Absolutely, positively not,” Stone told TheDCNF.
Corsi, 72, has claimed in interviews and on his YouTube channel that he was a victim of a perjury trap by Mueller’s team. He insisted that he has not broken the law and that prosecutors were going to charge him because he would not provide them with the information they wanted.
“I’m confident I did nothing wrong, and I had nothing to hide,” Corsi told TheDCNF in a phone interview on Nov. 13. He also said that his brain was “mush” after dozens of hours of interviews with prosecutors. He noted that he was unable to review all of the documents he provided to prosecutors after being subpoenaed on Aug. 28. He testified before the grand jury on Sept. 21 and Nov. 9.
Stone is a central figure in the Mueller probe because of his public comments and tweets during the 2016 campaign that suggested he had insight into WikiLeaks’ plans.
Stone has come under particular scrutiny for an Aug. 21, 2016, tweet in which he said that “it will soon (be) the Podesta’s time in the barrel.”
Stone denies that the tweet was about WikiLeaks’ emails. Instead, he claims he was referring to information Corsi provided him about Podesta and his lobbyist brother, Tony Podesta. Corsi sent Stone a report on the Podesta brothers’ business activities on Aug. 31, 2016.
Stone has said that he received tips from Randy Credico, a left-wing radio host, that WikiLeaks would release information that would “roil” the Clinton campaign. Text messages released by Stone show that Credico claimed to be “best friend” with a lawyer for WikiLeaks.
Though Credico has denied being Stone’s connection to WikiLeaks, the text messages show that Credico predicted that the information that WikiLeaks would release would hurt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary,” Credico wrote Stone on Aug. 27,
“(B)ig news Wednesday … Now pretend u don’t know me,” he told Stone on Oct. 1, 2016. “Hillary’s campaign will die this week.”
Credico’s denials have raised speculation that Stone had a second backchannel to WikiLeaks, possibly Corsi.
But Corsi has pointed to two tweets he sent just before WikiLeaks released Podesta’s emails as evidence that he did not have a heads-up about the document dump.
“If Assange has the goods on Hillary, he ought just to drop the goods,” Corsi wrote on Twitter on Oct. 2, 2016, just before Assange was expected to release documents at a press conference. “Otherwise, he’s going to make a fool of himself.”
Corsi criticized Assange after the news conference was canceled.
“So Assange made a fool of Himself,” he wrote on Oct. 4, 2016.
“Had zero, or he would have released it,” he wrote. “Will take grassroots on Internet to get truth out & beat Hillary.”
Corsi told TheDCNF last week that the tweets “showed that I really didn’t know for sure even in October when Assange didn’t release them.”
“Assange didn’t give me anything,” said Corsi.
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A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.
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