Author and political commentator Jerome Corsi, who was under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for potential collusion with Russia, claimed Mueller’s team tried to pressure him to plead guilty, during an interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.
“I got subpoenaed on August 28. I provided my computers, my laptops, my backup devices, everything, I voluntarily gave to the Special Counsel and to his prosecutors, and from the beginning they treated me like a criminal,” he told host and Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House in an exclusive interview on Thursday.
Corsi said prosecutors suspected he had communicated with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, whose website published embarrassing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Corsi claimed that prosecutors tried to convince him to admit to being that link, despite his denials, so that they could establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
He alleged the Mueller team used aggressive tactics:
They bring you into this unmarked FBI building in southeast Washington. You come in through the garage, you have to go in and give them in this safe room your laptops, all your electronic devices, your computer, everything, and they bring you up to this internal conference room, with no windows, no clock, and it’s me and my attorney David Gray at this point, to sit across from three of the prosecutors on Mueller’s team, and six to nine FBI, and they start grilling you for hour after hour, and if you forget some emails, or if you state something different from something they have from a phone call three years ago which you didn’t remember, all the prosecutors stand up, the FBI, they stomp out of the room, they call your attorney into the next room, they say they’re going to put you in prison for the rest of your life.
He alleged this went on for 40 hours over two months, and ended because he did not have contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“The prosecutors were convinced that I had introduced Roger Stone to Julian Assange, and I was the linchpin, I was key to the prosecutors establishing collusion argument, and if I had I lied or broken down and was willing to tell the prosecutors what they wanted, to stay out of prison, his report would have said collusion, because they believed I could give them the link they were looking for,” he said.
He claimed they threatened to put him away for the rest of his life.
“They said, ‘If you don’t accept this plea deal, and plea to this one count, and say you’re guilty of it, and then you’ll get no prison time, but if you don’t do this, we’re going to indict you with multiple counts, obstruction of justice, in Washington, DC, where the jury will hate you, and we’ll put you away for 25 years.
“Well, I’m 72 years old, that would have been a life sentence. But as I point out in silent no more, my wife woke up one morning and she said, ‘I’d rather visit you in prison for the rest of your life than have you not be the man I married.'”
“I decided I was going to tell them I was not going to take their plea deal, and they were furious,” he said.
Corsi also discussed his new book, “Silent No More,” on being investigated by the Special Counsel.
“I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and look out to see if the FBI’s outside. It was — it’s been a nightmare,” he said.
Corsi now predicts that after the release of Mueller’s report earlier this month, the “tables are going to turn” with Attorney General William Barr looking into whether the Obama administration had an appropriate predicate to spy on the Trump campaign.
“As I point out in Silent No More, these prosecutors, we have a weaponized system of justice right now that’s very heavily politicized, and this was under Obama. Barr’s job is to restore justice, the American people’s faith in justice,” he said.
Corsi said he has filed a $350 million lawsuit against Mueller and the Justice Department, the CIA, and other agencies.
“I think we have a politically corrupt justice and intelligence system, and I think it extends into the IRS and I think the bureaucracy is very, very biased against the Constitution, against the president…and I don’t think we’re going to anywhere clear this until we really root out the bureaucracy, I think we’d like to see term limits in the bureaucracy. I’d like to see these people rotated out,” he said.