OPINION:
During the Mueller probe, what started as voluntary testimony ended up a 40-hour inquisitorial nightmare with the prosecutors offering me a plea deal in lieu of indicting me.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors became angry and abusive in my six sessions of interviews with them over a two-month period in September and October last year precisely because I failed to have the all-important link to connect Roger Stone and Donald Trump to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. There was, of course, no such link. (For more on this, see my new book “Silent No More: How I Became a Political Prisoner to Mueller’s “Witch Hunt”.”)
Why were Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors so convinced they would lock and load their Russian collusion case with my testimony? Perhaps because in July and August 2016, when I was in Italy with my wife and family celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, I figured out on my own that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks had possession of the stolen emails from John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. I also speculated Mr. Assange would make these emails public in a serial, drip-by-drip fashion as that year’s October Surprise. When I came to these conclusions, I began communicating by email and phone regarding my suspicions.
Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors told my attorney that they were certain I had to have a contact with Mr. Assange because my information that Mr. Assange would drop “ad seriatim” Podesta emails in October was just too prescient to have involved simple deduction. Hence, the endless series of interviews.
The problem that turned my 40 hours of voluntary with the prosecutors into a nightmare was the truth that I have never had any contact with Julian Assange or WikiLeaks in any manner, either directly or indirectly. When I tried to explain to the prosecutors how I had “connected the dots” to come to the conclusion that Mr. Assange was holding stolen Podesta emails as his October Surprise, the prosecutors insisted that I was lying in order to protect Roger Stone and Donald Trump.
At least 20 hours out of my 40-hour inquisition involved an attempt by the prosecutors to identify my (non-existent) contact with Mr. Assange. In September and October 2018, the FBI contacted and often visited everyone who showed up in my email and phone records from 2016-17. I made an honest effort to see if I may have gotten information from Mr. Assange indirectly, through a contact I did not realize at the time was in touch with WikiLeaks.
I had responded to the subpoena to the Mueller grand jury that the FBI delivered to me showing up with no pre-announcement at my front door on Aug. 28, 2018, deciding to cooperate. I also volunteered to surrender to the FBI the laptop computers I had used in 2016-17, along with the external hard drives that contained my computer backup files. Additionally, I surrendered my cellphone and all my email accounts.
But when Mr. Mueller’s team ended its interview with me, the prosecutors nonetheless told my attorney that they intended to prosecute me for lying to them.
The plea deal that I was offered required me to plead guilty to one count that involved my first day’s testimony before I had reviewed my 2016 emails. The prosecutors gave me 10 days to recover and study my emails, at the end of which I returned to Washington and amended my first day testimony, acknowledging emails that I had forgotten that first day.
My attorney explained to me that if I rejected the plea deal, I would most likely face a hostile jury in Washington, and he expected the prosecutors would seek a conviction that would result in a 25-year prison term. Since I was 72 years old at the time, I expected a prison term of that length would have meant I was likely to die in federal prison. So, my choice was to plead guilty to one count with the prosecutors’ agreement they would seek no prison term, or reject their prison deal to spend possibly $2 million that I did not have to defend myself in a federal criminal case that I was sure to lose.
As I struggled through this decision, my wife woke up one morning and told me she would rather visit me in prison for the rest of my life than have me not be the man she married. That was the final piece I needed to resolve my decision that I could not swear before a federal judge and before God that I had knowingly and willfully provided Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors and the FBI with information on a material matter with the intent to deceive them. I had not done that. Yes, I suffered many memory mistakes, but always Mr. Mueller’s team had allowed me to amend my testimony when they pulled, for instance, an email or a phone record that contradicted my recollection from the 6-to-8 inch binder with my name on it that Mr. Mueller’s team would not allow me to examine.
That Mr. Mueller’s team folded its tent without prosecuting me proved Mr. Mueller had threatened me to accept a plea deal on a criminal charge the prosecutors and FBI could not prove in court. I feel vindicated in that Robert Mueller’s failure to prosecute me affirms that I did not lie.
• Jerome Corsi, a political commentator, is the author of “Silent No More” (Post Hill Press, 2019).
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