Stone associate negotiating plea deal

WASHINGTON — Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller, according to Corsi and another person with knowledge of the talks.

The talks with Corsi, an associate of President Donald Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone, could bring Mueller’s team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to WikiLeaks’ release of hacked Democratic emails in 2016, a key part of his long-running inquiry.

Corsi provided research on Democratic figures during the campaign to Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stone’s activities in an effort to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination.

Stone has said Corsi, 72, also has a relationship with Trump, built on their shared interest in the falsehood that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Corsi confirmed the plea negotiations after they were first reported by The Washington Post on Friday. He declined to comment further except to say there may be developments next week.

David Gray, an attorney for Corsi, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

Stone said in a statement that he was not aware of any plea discussions involving Corsi, describing him as an investigative journalist “whose activities I would think would largely be covered under the First Amendment.”

The deal is not yet complete and could still be derailed. It also is not clear what information Corsi could leverage to get a deal with prosecutors. However, he told the Daily Caller last week that prosecutors are focused on whether he had developed a source with inside information about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s plans.

If Mueller could prove that Corsi learned about Podesta’s emails from Assange or another person in contact with him, he could try to link WikiLeaks’ releases to Stone or others in Trump’s world.

Stone told the publication that Corsi never relayed such information.

“He never told me that he had figured out or believed that John Podesta’s emails had been stolen,” Stone said.

On Aug. 21, 2016, Stone tweeted “it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel.” He has insisted that his tweet had nothing to do with any plan by WikiLeaks and that it was based on research Corsi had provided to him about work Podesta and his lobbyist brother Tony had done involving Russia.