National Security

Mueller docs show communications between Corsi, Stone on WikiLeaks’s email release

by Jacqueline Thomsen and Olivia Beavers

Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, anticipated in emails to Roger Stone that WikiLeaks was planning to release another tranche of stolen and damaging documents ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to multiple reports based on knowledge of draft court papers.

The charging document — which reportedly details exchanges between Corsi and Stone, a former informal Trump campaign adviser — signals that special counsel Robert Mueller is increasingly scrutinizing WikiLeaks’s release of the Democratic emails and allegations about Stone’s foreknowledge of the leak.

“Word is [Julian Assange] plans 2 more dumps,” Corsi reportedly wrote in an August 2016 email. “One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”

{mosads}The documents also allege that Stone told his friend Corsi to get in touch with Assange about the forthcoming email release.

“Get to [Assange] [a]t Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending [WikiLeaks] emails,” reads the email to Corsi dated July 25, 2016, according to the draft court documents.

The whistleblower site made two separate email dumps during the heated presidential race that caused massive embarrassment to the Democratic Party. They included internal documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by Russian-linked hackers and emails from the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.

Corsi told The Hill that he was able to “deduce” that Assange wouldn’t release the Podesta emails until October, after noticing that emails from the Clinton campaign chair weren’t included in past WikiLeaks email releases.

“I said, ‘I bet that’s what Assange is going to do because it’s what I would have done,’ ” Corsi said, adding that he believed Assange would have wanted to “dribble” out the emails. He claimed he knew the month when Assange would choose to drop Podesta’s emails because strategically it would cause a maximum effect in the press.

An attorney for Corsi declined to comment on the matter, as did a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. 

Stone said in an email to The Hill late Tuesday that to “claim that anything in the emails proves that I had advance knowledge that John Podesta’s email had been stolen and would be published is false.”
 
“There is simply nothing illegal about trying to find out what this was about. Again no evidence that I received allegedly stolen the material and passed it on to anyone,” Stone said. “The only thing is illegal here appears to be Corsi’s decision to lie about receiving these emails.”
 
Corsi had said Monday that he received an offer for a plea deal on one count of perjury from Mueller’s team, but rejected the terms.

Corsi told The Hill on Tuesday that signing the plea deal would mean admitting to committing a crime he didn’t commit.

Corsi claims that when he was initially questioned about the email from Stone that is cited in the charging documents, he did not have the opportunity to review his emails from that period of time, leading to him not recalling the exchange.

He said that after investigators told him during the interview that they had evidence contradicting his statements, he was allowed to leave and look through his past emails, and then amend his testimony to reflect what he had actually written.

WikiLeaks released the damaging emails in the weeks ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Mueller has indicted 12 Russian military officers for their alleged involvement in the hack.

Stone has increasingly appeared to be in Mueller’s crosshairs over the past few months, with several of his associates being subpoenaed to testify before the special counsel’s grand jury.

Stone himself has acknowledged that he is likely to be indicted by Mueller, but has denied that he was in contact with Assange ahead of the WikiLeaks email dump.

He has claimed that an anonymous, inside source told him the organization had information that would disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

This story was updated at 9:17 a.m.