Conservative author Jerome Corsi, with his lawyer Larry Klayman, right, speaks in Washington on Jan. 3. Credit: Paul Handley, AFP, Getty Images
Conservative author Jerome Corsi on Monday apologized for writing an article in which he falsely alleged that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in 2016, and Aaron Rich, his brother, had leaked thousands of emails to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks.
Corsi said in a statement that the allegations he made in his article, which was posted on the Infowars website last March, “were not based upon any independent factual knowledge” about the Rich brothers.
Jerome Corsi, an associate of the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., said he might be indicted in the special counsel investigation. Credit: Shannon Stapleton, Reuters
WASHINGTON — An associate of the former Trump campaign adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. released documents on Tuesday showing that as the presidential campaign heated up in the summer of 2016, Mr. Stone tried to dispatch him to find out what information WikiLeaks had that could prove damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The associate, Jerome Corsi, said in an interview that he might be indicted on a charge of lying to federal investigators because he told them that he refused Mr. Stone’s request when in fact he passed it on to an intermediary. He said he had refused a plea deal offered by the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, because he did not intentionally lie, but merely forgot events of more than two years ago.
Mr. Corsi’s dealings with Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors have caused alarm among the president’s legal team, who were informed of developments by Mr. Corsi’s lawyer. President Trump’s lawyers were especially troubled by a draft statement of offense against Mr. Corsi that was passed on to them, according to people familiar with the situation. In it, prosecutors claimed that Mr. Corsi understood that Mr. Stone was “in regular contact with senior members of the Trump campaign, including with then-candidate Donald J. Trump” when he asked Mr. Corsi in late July 2016 to “get to” Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
