Trump ally Roger Stone says his friend Jerome Corsi is being “harassed” by special counsel Robert Mueller after Corsi revealed Monday he declined to enter a plea agreement.
In a text message to Patrick Howley of Big League Politics, a right-wing news website, Stone said Corsi declined the deal because he wouldn’t agree to a “false narrative.”
“I continue to see that my friend Dr. Jerry Corsi is being harassed by the special counsel, not for lying but for refusing to lie,” Stone said, according to Howley, who read the text on his show. “It is inconceivable that in America someone would be prosecuted for refusing to swear to a false narrative pushed on his by the Mueller investigators.”
Mueller’s team is investigating whether there were any connections between WikiLeaks and Trump associates ahead of the 2016 presidential election. In regards to Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of Infowars, Mueller wants to know whether he shared information with Stone about emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
NBC News first reported in October that Mueller had received communications indicating that Corsi was aware ahead of the emails’ release that they had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks.
Corsi told the Washington Post that some inconsistencies between his statements and emails had heightened scrutiny among members of Mueller’s team, but admitted to the Post his memory was “horrible.” “I am not going to lie to avoid going to prison,” Corsi said.
“I found my recollection was horrible,” Corsi added. “But I am not swearing to a federal judge that I intentionally lied to the special counsel.”
Stone, who like Corsi is known for pushing right-wing conspiracy theories, has also been scrutinized by Mueller’s investigators after he appeared to predict the publication of the stolen emails on the WikiLeaks website, tweeting in 2016 that Podesta and his brother’s “time in the barrel” would soon occur.
But Stone has said the comments were based off his own investigation and has maintained that he had no advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ actions.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” in 2017 that WikiLeaks was used by Russian intelligence to published information to help elect President Trump. WikiLeaks has denied this was the case.
