Last updated on October 12th, 2018 at 04:00 am
On Friday another associate of Donald Trump’s friend Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, met with a federal grand jury convened to hear testimony in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling.
Corsi has been the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the controversial far-right news outlet Infowars. He is one of 11 people associated with Stone who have been contacted by the special counsel, many of whom have given sworn testimony to the grand jury.
Corsi’s appearance means that Robert Mueller is still focusing on Stone, a longtime Trump ally and political supporter.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
And now a Corsi email recently obtained by the media shows that Stone tried to contact WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during a very critical time in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
This email is one of at least two between Stone and Corsi that make reference to conservative author Ted Malloch. The emails may provide evidence that Stone committed a crime by lying to Congress when he testified last spring.
The July 31, 2016, email seems to be a direct attempt by Stone to connect with Assange by using Corsi and Malloch as go-betweens. Stone has confirmed that he sent the email to Corsi.
“Malloch should see Assange,†Stone wrote to Corsi in the email.
Malloch, an American academic and conservative author, spoke to investigators on Mueller‘s team for over an hour earlier this year. In a recently published book Malloch wrote that investigators wanted to discuss his ties to Stone, Corsi and WikiLeaks.
After news of the email came out Stone said:
“It proves I had no advance knowledge of contents of WikiLeaks’ DNC material, and like every politico and journalist in America, I wanted to know what the content matter was.â€
Stone sent the email to Corsi nine days after WikiLeaks published the first group of documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). These documents from DNC computer servers were illegally obtained by hacker Guccifer 2.0, a false identity which has since been identified as Russian government intelligence employees working as hackers based in Moscow.
The newly-disclosed email supports the assertion that Stone, an informal Trump campaign adviser, tried to communicate with Assange about the politically explosive DNC documents stolen by Russia and given to WikiLeaks.
Democrats have alleged that Stone knew about the hacked DNC documents and gave cues to WikiLeaks to publish them at key moments when the Trump campaign needed to distract attention from bad news for the candidate.
The first publication of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, for example, came a short time after The Washington Post posted a video from Access Hollywood that was damaging to Trump’s bid because he admitted he had sexually assaulted women.
Stone has denied all accusations that he was coordinating between Russian intelligence agents and WikiLeaks.
“Corsi either never passed the suggestion on, or Malloch ignored it — but I think it is the latter,†Stone said during an interview with ABC News. “The key is Malloch never contacts or sees Assange and never gets anything from him.â€
“There has been some inference in the media that Ted was somehow a go-between between me, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange,†Stone told ABC News in May. “This is false.â€
When asked about the email — and whether he carried out the suggested tasks outlined by Stone — Malloch told ABC News on Sunday: “I was not involved in any of these matters. I have never tried to reach Assange or visited that embassy.â€
The new email also has two more requests from Stone to Corsi to pass on information to Malloch.
- Stone suggested that Malloch find a British woman who had leveled accusations against former President Bill Clinton.
- Stone also suggested Corsi ask Malloch to find Sen. Bernie Sanders’ brother “who called Bill a Rapist†and “turn him for Trump.â€
Stone has been under great scrutiny lately from the special counsel because of statements he made in August of 2016 about the illegally hacked Democratic emails. It has been alleged that Stone knew in advance that WikiLeaks was going to leak the damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton before it was released.
Stone has previously confirmed that he briefly communicated with Guccifer 2.0, the Russian intelligence hackers who illegally accessed the Democratic National Committee email servers and stole documents. It is widely agreed that the release of these stolen DNC and Clinton campaign documents greatly harmed Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Although Stone is denying he did anything wrong, this latest development may result in him soon being indicted and arrested by Robert Mueller for various crimes. We can’t wait.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
