Jerome Corsi, an associate of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, revealed on Monday that he has received an offer from special counsel Robert Mueller for a plea deal on one count of perjury – and he plans to reject it.
Corsi's role in the ongoing federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election largely revolves whether he acted as an intermediary between Stone, President Trump's former campaign adviser, and WikiLeaks.
The right-wing conspiracy theorist and notorious Obama "birther" told CNN that the special counsel "can put me in prison the rest of my life. I am not going to lie."
The news comes three days after Corsi said he was in plea negotiations with Mueller's team. Earlier this month, he said that he expected to be indicted for "giving false information to the special counsel or to one of the other grand jury."
Corsi has previously insisted that, to the "best of [his] knowledge," he had no contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that "investigators were so mad, because I didn't give them what they wanted."
Last month, Corsi appeared before the special counsel's grand jury, as Mueller has reportedly focused on his connections to Assange. Mueller has indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in a sustained effort to hack the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee in the weeks ahead of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The damaging emails were released on WikiLeaks.
In a statement Monday following Corsi's latest comments, Stone told CNN that the special counsel was harassing Corsi "not for lying, but for refusing to lie."
"It is inconceivable that, in America, someone would be prosecuted for refusing to swear to a false narrative pushed on him by the Muller investigators," Stone said.
Stone also said last week, "I feel badly for Jerry Corsi. He looks like he has been squeezed, but – as far as I know – he refuses to lie." While Stone expressed sympathy for his associate's mounting legal problems, he also appeared to question his credibility by saying, "He doesn't believe the moon landing happened, for example. He thinks it was staged."
Corsi became linked to Stone and the Mueller investigation, more generally, after he suggested that one of his pre-election articles for InfoWars inspired Stone to tweet in August 2016 that "it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel." Six weeks later, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman.
Stone, meanwhile, has adamantly denied any wrongdoing regarding WikiLeaks' releases during the 2016 presidential campaign. Several of his associates have reportedly testified before a grand jury as Mueller's team continued its probe into Stone.
"I never received advance notice from anyone that Podesta's emails had been 'nicked,' as the Brits would say, and would be published," Stone said Monday. "Any and all research I received from Dr. Corsi came from public legal sources. As Dr. Corsi has said, I have no knowledge of any contact or communication with Julian Assange or WikiLeaks by Dr. Corsi."
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