Jerome Corsi: I am not seeking a pardon from Trump

Conservative author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi said Wednesday that he won’t be pursuing a pardon from President Trump after rejecting a plea deal offer from the special counsel that would have allowed him to avoid prison.

Corsi said during an interview with The Hill that he had no interest in pursuing a presidential pardon.

“My decision to reject the special counsel offer was not made anticipating a pardon, I have no reason to believe or anticipate that President Trump would pardon me,” Corsi said.

{mosads}“And even if the president promised that he would not pardon me, I would still make the same decision, because I’m not going to violate my integrity in order to stay out of jail,” he continued.

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

Corsi said earlier this week that he had rejected an offer for a plea deal from the special counsel on a charge of lying to federal investigators.

He said that pleading guilty to the charge would have meant that he would be agreeing to lie, as he did not believe he had willfully lied.

Draft court documents from the special counsel’s team obtained by The Hill show that prosecutors allege that Corsi made false statements during a Sept. 6 interview.

The documents claim that Corsi initially told investigators that he declined a request from an individual, whom Corsi identified as Roger Stone, to get in touch with WikiLeaks about “pending … emails.”

However, the documents state that Corsi later replied to Stone, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” appearing to refer to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Mueller has been eyeing both Stone and Corsi in relation to WikiLeaks’s release of damaging Democratic emails in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election as part of the investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

Stone, a former Trump campaign adviser, and Corsi have both denied being in contact with Assange.

Corsi has also said that he “deduced” that the emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta would be released because they weren’t included in a previous dump of Democratic emails.

Stone, meanwhile, has said that he had a source who told him that WikiLeaks had damaging information that would disrupt the election.