Political trickster Roger Stone appears to have turned on Jerome Corsi.
In an Instagram post Sunday, Stone said the man he has called a “friend” was working with special counsel Robert Mueller to trap him with a perjury charge.
“So Jerry Corsi was working with Mueller to sandbag me on a fabricated perjury charge,” Stone said in a post Sunday morning along with a photo of Corsi.
“Mueller’s minion even promised Corsi no jail time if he would lie and say he gave me John Podesta’s stolen e-mails (which he did NOT) Then they were going to say I passed them on to Trump (which I did NOT),” Stone added. “Jerry was willing to LIE about me but not himself! Now Jerry is lying about legitimate research he did for me regarding the Podesta brothers lucrative business in Russia.”
Asked to clarify why he was suddenly lashing out at Corsi, Stone referred to interviews Corsi has done in recent weeks in which he claimed he had told Stone and “many” others that he had figured out WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, which were stolen by Russian intelligence officers.
“The assertion made by Dr. Corsi in a number of interviews that he told me that Podesta‘s emails had been stolen prior to their publication is false and there is no evidence to support it,” Stone told the Washington Examiner.
Both Stone and Corsi, who have made appearances on conspiracy theory website InfoWars, are being scrutinized by Mueller’s team.
Stone piqued the interests of Mueller’s team with an August 2016 tweet that said, “it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.” In October 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of emails hacked from Podesta’s personal account. Stone has claimed that statement was in reference to his own investigations of Podesta and his brother, Tony.
Corsi is a key part of Mueller’s investigation into whether there was a connection between WikiLeaks and President Trump’s inner circle, but has not yet been indicted after he says he rejected a plea deal because he was unwilling to lie.
Corsi filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month that accused Mueller of “illegal and unconstitutional surveillance” of his phone and electronic records and of leaking grand jury information. In his lawsuit, Corsi said Mueller’s team had unfairly targeted him because it has “misrepresented the investigative research” that Corsi conducted into emails exchanged between Podesta and Hillary Clinton, and because of Corsi’s “investigative deduction” that the emails would “probably be released at a later date.”
Stone admits that he himself encouraged Corsi to look for what WikiLeaks had in the summer of 2016 after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange boasted on TV of having material on Clinton. “I do not believe legitimate political inquiry violates the law,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Corsi’s defense team wrote in the lawsuit that the special counsel has “demanded” that Corsi “false testify” that he acted as a liaison between Stone and Assange.
The lawsuit also alleged that Mueller’s team has leaked grand jury information about Corsi.
The tone take by Stone, who said he believes Corsi’s denial of having contacts with WikiLeaks, has shifted over the past month when referring to Corsi. In late November, the former Trump adviser lamented how he saw “my friend Dr. Jerry Corsi is being harassed by the special counsel, not for lying but for refusing to lie.”
A day later, Stone snapped at Corsi on Instagram for saying he wanted a “cover story” for the tweet that appeared to predict the Podesta emails dump by WikiLeaks. “Jerry is simply mistaken that what we discussed was a cover,” Stone said at the time.
Now Stone appears to be choosing more pointed rhetoric.
“Jerry Corsi is starting to make Michael Cohen look like a stand up guy!” Stone said Sunday on Instagram, referring to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who reached a plea deal in the Mueller investigation last month.
Kelly Cohen contributed to this report.
