In addition to Randy Credico, Jerome Corsi will testify before the Mueller grand jury on Friday. That means that the grand jury will hear testimony from two people who can address the truth of two claims Roger Stone made before the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, 2017.
First, there’s Stone’s claim he learned about WikiLeaks’ plans to release the John Podesta emails in October via Credico.
Now, let me address the charge that I had advance knowledge of the timing, content and source of the WikiLeaks disclosures from the DNC. On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange, announced that he was in possession of Clinton DNC emails. I learned this by reading it on Twitter. I asked a journalist who I knew had interviewed Assange to independently confirm this report, and he subsequently did. This journalist assured me that WikiLeaks would release this information in October and continued to assure me of this throughout the balance of August and all of September. This information proved to be correct. I have referred publicly to this journalist as an, “intermediary”, “go-between” and “mutual friend.” All of these monikers are equally true.
Credico has not only said this is not true, but that Stone threatened him to prevent him from testifying as much.
Then, there’s Stone’s claim (first made publicly by Corsi the previous March) that his tweet predicting John Podesta would soon catch political heat pertained to a project he and Corsi were working on at the time.
My Tweet of August 21, 2016, in which I said, “Trust me, it will soon be the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary” Must be examined in context. I posted this at a time that my boyhood friend and colleague, Paul Manafort, had just resigned from the Trump campaign over allegations regarding his business activities in Ukraine. I thought it manifestly unfair that John Podesta not be held to the same standard. Note, that my Tweet of August 21, 2016, makes no mention, whatsoever, of Mr. Podesta’s email, but does accurately predict that the Podesta brothers’ business activities in Russia with the oligarchs around Putin, their uranium deal, their bank deal, and their Gazprom deal, would come under public scrutiny. Podesta’s activities were later reported by media outlets as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. My extensive knowledge of the Podesta brothers’ business dealings in Russia was based on The Panama Papers, which were released in early 2016, which revealed that the Podesta brothers had extensive business dealings in Russia. The Tweet is also based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st , all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podesta’s email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin.
I noted at the time that that Corsi’s explanation didn’t make any sense, because while the July 31 report did pertain to John Podesta, his August 31 report focused exclusively on Tony (the Corsi materials start at page 39 of Stone’s HPSCI testimony; note the conflation of Tony for John got repeated in Craig Murray’s explanations for the WikiLeaks’ go-between he met in September).
But the explanation is even less credible given what has happened since: Paul Manafort, whose plight the Corsi report was (per Stone) explicitly a response to, got indicted in part because he told Tony Podesta to hide his ties to Russian-backed Ukrainian politicians. Indeed, in classic Corsi style, he describes Podesta’s role in Manafort’s crime, without disclosing that Podesta was in legal trouble because of Manafort’s effort to hide his own crimes; Corsi presented them as equal partners in this crime.
CNN further reported on Aug. 19 the Podesta Group had issued a statement affirming the firm has retained the boutique Washington-based law http://www.capdale.com firm Caplin & Drysdale “to determine if we were mislead by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals with potential ties to foreign governments or political parties.” The Podesta Group statement issued to CNN continued: “When the Centre became a client, it certified in writing that ‘none of the activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.’ We relied on that certification and advice from counsel in registering and reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
The CNN statement concluded with the statement, “We will take whatever measures are necessary to address this situation based on Caplin & Drysdale’s review, including possible legal action against the Centre.” In breaking the story that the Podesta Group had hired Caplin & Drysdale, Buzz Feed https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/top-lobbying-firm-hiresoutside-counsel-in-ukraine-manafort?utm term=.duLexkeKBx#.rj4gn3gmln reported on Aug. 19, that both the Podesta Group and Manafort’s D.C. political firm were working under contract with the same group advising Yanukovych and his Ukrainian Party of Regions – namely the non-profit European Centre for a Modern Ukraine based in Brussels. On Dec. 20, 2013, Reuters reported http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usaukraine-lobbying-idUSBRE9BJ1B220131220#6oTXxKZp25obYxzF.99 the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine paid $900,000 to the Podesta Group for a two-year contract aimed at improving the image of the Yanukovych government in the United States that the Podesta Group told Reuters they were implementing through contacts with key congressional Democrats.
That detail is important of a number of reasons. First, because it makes it entirely unlikely that Stone (who was meeting with Rick Gates during this period, if not his “boyhood friend” Manafort himself) learned of Podesta’s ties via Panama Papers and not from Manafort himself. But it also provides a reason why Corsi and Stone would be focusing on Tony at the time — to draw attention away from Manafort, and with it, the corruption that Manafort implicated the Trump Administration in. Indeed, the Manafort EDVA court record shows that Gates and Manafort were using a range of financial and political means of doing the same at precisely that time.
It’s clear, given what we’ve learned as part of the Manafort prosecutions, that the effort to impugn Tony Podesta had everything (as Stone partly tells truthfully)to do with the plight of Manafort at the time.
Which is to say, it didn’t have anything to do with John, and so can’t be used to explain that tweet.
On top of everything else. Mueller appears to be finishing up false statements charges against Stone.