Jerome Corsi wrote an email to Roger Stone in August 2016 telling him, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” and “One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” NBC News reported, citing a court document sent from Mueller’s team to Corsi. Later in August, Stone, a longtime Trump associate, would tweet that it would soon be John Podesta’s “time in the barrel,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. WikiLeaks began releasing Podesta’s emails in October.
WikiLeaks head Julian Assange, who had taken refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London, had said in June, “we have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,” and “we have emails pending publication.”
CNN reported that in one of the draft filings, “the special counsel’s team outlined how Stone, who is identified simply as Person 1, allegedly sought the information and emails from WikiLeaks using at least one person, Corsi, as a go-between.”
Corsi has said that he rejected a plea deal over a perjury charge with Mueller’s office. In a book obtained by the Daily Caller, Corsi says that he had worked with Stone to provide him with a memo that would retrospectively justify Stone’s now infamous tweet about Podesta.
NBC says the court documents it obtained show that Corsi told Mueller’s investigators that Stone “asked him in summer 2016 to get in touch with an organization, identified by Corsi as WikiLeaks, about unreleased materials relevant to the presidential campaign.” Corsi reportedly told Mueller’s team, falsely, that he had “declined the request” from Stone and “made clear to Stone that an attempt to contact WikiLeaks could put them in investigators’ crosshairs.”
This was, according to the court documents, untrue, and Corsi had actually asked another person to help facilitate contact with Wikileaks. “Eight days later, Corsi sent the email to Stone saying that WikiLeaks possessed information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and planned to release it in October,” NBC reported.
“Time to let more than (Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta) to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton),” Corsi said in an email included in the court document obtained by NBC. “That appears to be the game hackers are now about.”
Corsi explained the emails to NBC as merely his predictions about when damaging material would be released and insisted he had no contact with WikiLeaks. “Why did I think they were coming out in October? Because I said to myself if I had these emails I’d use them as the October surprise,” Corsi told NBC.
