Key Democrat urges perjury investigation
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said Sunday that the testimony of former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone should be provided to special counsel Robert Mueller “for consideration of whether perjury charges are warranted.”
The comments from Rep. Adam Schiff, DBurbank, come days after President Trump’s former lawyer pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, raising questions about whether the special counsel would pursue similar charges against others eyed in the Russia probe.
Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week” that emails between Stone and an associate, Jerome Corsi, are “inconsistent” with the testimony that Stone gave to the committee last year.
Schiff, who will chair the intelligence committee when Democrats take control of the House next year, suggested that others may also potentially be in legal jeopardy for providing false testimony to the congressional committee. There’s generally a high legal threshold to prove such a charge, but he said “there are some people that I’m confident have met and exceeded that bar.”
Mueller’s investigators are trying to determine whether Corsi and Stone had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential effort. U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russia was the source of that hacked material.
Documents drafted by Mueller’s team as part of a potential plea deal with Corsi — which he has rejected — contained portions of emails he exchanged with Stone in the summer of 2016 about WikiLeaks.
In late July 2016, 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, according to the documents. Stone said he wanted Corsi to try to obtain emails the group possessed about Clinton.
Both Stone and Corsi have denied any wrongdoing, and Stone has denied knowing Assange or being a conduit for WikiLeaks. He said last month that he had “no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures.”
Corsi has said the email he sent Stone in reply — which accurately forecast that WikiLeaks would release derogatory information about Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in October — was based on his own deduction and not the result of any inside information or a source close to the group.
Prosecutors from Mueller’s office had offered Corsi a deal to plead guilty to a false statements charge, but he said he rejected the offer because he didn’t knowingly mislead investigators. He now says he expects he will be indicted.