Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Mueller team follows email trail
Paper indicates WikiLeaks focus
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team believes a conservative author and conspiracy theorist tipped off President Donald Trump’s confidant Roger Stone months before WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to a document newly made public.
The document, which was drafted as part of a plea offer to Jerome Corsi, provides an unprecedented window into an active part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump’s associates. It reveals that
Mueller is keenly focused on whether Americans close to the Trump campaign had any foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked material during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The document’s contents were first reported by NBC News, and a copy of it was posted online by The Washington Post. Corsi said Tuesday evening that the document had been provided to his attorney by Mueller’s team. Stone has denied knowing about WikiLeaks’ plans ahead of time. Mueller spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment.
Corsi said the document, which mirrors similar ones filed by Mueller in previous plea deals, contains portions of emails he exchanged with Stone in the summer of 2016 about WikiLeaks. But he denied that he intentionally lied to investigators about the emails and said that was why he rejected the plea offer, which would have charged him with one count of making false statements.
“I did not ever willfully and knowingly give them false information,” Corsi said. He said he forgot about the emails in question during his first interview with Mueller’s team, noting they were among 60,000 contained on the laptop he provided to the special counsel’s office.
According to the document, the emails were exchanged in late July and early August 2016, more than two months before WikiLeaks published thousands of emails stolen from the private email account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
In late July 2016, the document shows, Stone emailed Corsi, asking him to get in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012. Stone said he wanted Corsi to try to obtain emails that the group possessed about Clinton.
The document says Corsi passed Stone’s request to an “overseas individual,” whom Corsi identified as Ted Malloch, a London-based academic who has said he was also questioned by Mueller. And on Aug. 2, 2016, the document quotes Corsi’s response 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,” wrote Corsi, who was in Europe at the time. He then told Stone it was time for Podesta to “be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC,” a reference to Clinton.
On Tuesday, Corsi said the email he sent Stone — which accurately forecast that WikiLeaks would release derogatory information about Podesta in October — was based on his own deduction and not the result of any inside information or a source close to the group.
“It’s all a guess. That email — ‘word is’ — is 100 percent speculation on my part, a package so that Roger’s not going to dismiss it because I’m real sure I’m right,” he said.
He said he has never had contact with Assange and that he didn’t obtain any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.
Corsi said he disclosed to investigators — including Mueller team members Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zelinsky and Andrew Goldstein — that he had told Stone that Assange had Podesta emails. “But I maintained and still do that I figured it out,” he said, adding: “I made it sound maybe like I had a source, but I didn’t. And I don’t think Stone ever believed me.”
Corsi said the prosecutors wouldn’t believe him, thinking he was trying to protect Stone. And he believes he was threatened with a felony charge “because I couldn’t give them what they wanted” by connecting Stone to WikiLeaks.
Corsi said he also believes the plea offer was extended to prevent him from speaking publicly about his contact with Mueller’s team. He said he doesn’t know if Mueller will now follow through with charging him. The last time his attorney, David Gray, heard from Mueller’s team was on Monday after he had publicly rejected the deal.
According to Corsi, they told Gray: “We’ll take it from here.”
‘THREE MAJOR PLAYERS’
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday continued his attacks on the special counsel investigation. In a morning tweet, Trump claimed that “3 major players” under investigation have “intimated” that Mueller’s team “is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts & they will get relief.”
“This is our Joseph McCarthy Era!” Trump said, referring to the period during the 1950s named for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., in which hundreds of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers.
In tweets Tuesday, Trump accused Mueller of being a “conflicted prosecutor gone rogue” who is doing “TREMENDOUS damage” to the criminal justice system.
Despite the president’s broadsides, aides have continued to insist that he has no intentions of directing Mueller’s firing or otherwise interfering in the investigation.
In Wednesday’s tweet, Trump did not specify which three “major players” have said Mueller’s team is telling them to lie.
But in an interview with the New York Post, Trump identified them as Stone, Corsi and his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Prosecutors working with Mueller this week accused Manafort of breaching a plea agreement by repeatedly lying to them in the investigation into Russian interference. In a court filing, Manafort denied doing so intentionally.
Trump also told the New York Post that a presidential pardon for Manafort was “not off the table.”
“It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table,” Trump said. “Why would I take it off the table?”
Manafort pleaded guilty Sept. 14, on the eve of jury selection for his trial in Washington, to two charges — conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to obstruct justice — admitting to years of financial crimes related to his undisclosed lobbying work for a pro-Russian political party and politician in Ukraine.
Under the agreement with prosecutors, Manafort faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in the D.C. case, not counting a sentence for his August conviction in Virginia for bank and tax fraud.
As part of his plea agreement, Manafort promised to tell the government about “his participation in and knowledge of all criminal activities.”
On Tuesday, the day after Mueller’s team accused Manafort of lying to them, he adamantly denied a report in The Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange around March 2016. That’s the same month Manafort joined the Trump campaign and Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the Clinton campaign’s email accounts.
The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal. All the while, Manafort’s lawyers have been briefing Trump’s attorneys on what their client has told investigators, an unusual arrangement that could give Trump ammunition in his feud against Mueller.
“They share with me the things that pertain to our part of the case,” Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said.
It’s unclear what prosecutors contend Manafort lied about, though they’re expected to make a public filing that could offer answers. More details could emerge in a hearing set for Friday where both sides will weigh in on the next steps in the case, including the possible setting of Manafort’s sentencing date.
“I did not ever willfully and knowingly give them false information.” — Jerome Corsi, author