A new report indicates prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller are targeting Jerome Corsi for forwarding a request from political operative Roger Stone to meet with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two months before the site released emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
NBC News obtained a “draft court document” which describes emails apparently showing Stone urging Corsi, the former Infowars D.C. bureau chief, to meet with Assange in a July 25, 2016 correspondence.
“Get to (Assange) [a]t Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending (WikiLeaks) emails,” Stone’s purported email to Corsi reads. The conservative author says he rejected the request, telling Stone that any attempt to sit down with Assange would raise suspicious among federal authorities. However, according to NBC News’ document, Corsi forwarded Stone’s email to American academic Ted Malloch.
Corsi emailed Stone eight days later claiming WikiLeaks would release damaging information implicating the Clinton campaign in October.
“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” Corsi told Stone via email. “One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”
“Time to let more than (Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta) to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton),” added Corsi. “That appears to be the game hackers are now about.”
NBC News reports:
The draft court documents says that Corsi met with the special counsel’s office for several additional interviews and provided access to his email accounts and electronic devices.
In the interviews, the draft court papers say, Corsi said that his claims to Stone, beginning in 2016, that he had a way of obtaining confidential information from WikiLeaks were false.
Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, has told NBC News that he had no direct or indirect contact with WikiLeaks. Corsi claims to have anticipated WikiLeaks’ release of the hacked emails by “connecting the dots” between public statements from Assange and other available materials.
In a letter to Mueller, David Gray, Corsi’s attorney, called on Mueller not to charge Corsi with perjury, saying that his client properly “amended” his statements after reviewing his emails.
“I understand that this plea to making a false claim is predicated on the fact that Dr. Corsi had emails and phone calls wherein he was in fact interested in WikiLeaks,” wrote Gray.”He had not had the benefit of reviewing all of his emails prior to the interview and you graciously allowed him to review his emails and amend his statements — which he did. Now, after various amendments to his statements, Dr. Corsi is being asked to affirmatively state that he lied to FBI agents. The issue is that the statements that Dr. Corsi made were, in fact, the best he could recall at the time.”
On Monday, Corsi revealed he would be rejecting a plea agreement with Mueller and accused the special counsel of “Gestapo” tactics. “They can put me in prison the rest of my life,” Corsi said in a statement to CNN. “I am not going to sign a lie.”