Conservative author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi agreed in a new interview that he “absolutely” intended to help President Trump’s campaign by trying to get stolen Hillary Clinton emails from WikiLeaks.
Appearing Wednesday on Ari Melber’s MSNBC show, Corsi was grilled about his involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow in 2016.
{mosads}“Everybody in the world who was in news or political operations after July 22 2016 when Assange dumped all these emails on [then-Democratic National Committee Chairwoman] Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and said he had more, everyone wanted to know what they were,” Corsi explained.
“You wanted them out though to help the Trump campaign,” Melber interjected.
Corsi responded “absolutely” and said that he didn’t see anything wrong with it.
Later in the interview, Corsi said he would have loved to see the emails, saying, “I was happy to do it and I was happy that it would benefit Donald Trump.”
Corsi also told MSNBC that he “might die in jail” after rejecting a plea deal from Mueller on a charge of lying to federal investigators. He said earlier that he did not believe he willfully lied.
Draft court documents from the special counsel’s team obtained by The Hill show that prosecutors allege that Corsi made false statements during a Sept. 6 interview. The documents claim that Corsi initially told investigators that he declined a request from an individual, whom Corsi identified as Roger Stone, to get in touch with WikiLeaks about “pending … emails.”
However, the documents state that Corsi later replied to Stone, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” appearing to refer to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In his interview with Melber he made it clear that Stone, a former informal Trump campaign adviser, and Assange were the people in question.
Mueller has been eyeing both Stone and Corsi in relation to WikiLeaks’s release of damaging Democratic emails in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election as part of the investigation into Russia’s role in the process.
Stone and Corsi have both denied being in contact with Assange.
Updated at 8:40 a.m.