he was therefore secretly never really president, says jerome corsi. because of that past and everything else he is known for, jerome corsi says thing is no evidence to me that thing exists or is worth writing down, just as a general mathematical principle. but what nbc news has now obtained are apparently court documents that were prepared about mr. corsi by the special counsel's office to show him the way in which he was going to be criminally charged and the plea deal he could choose to sign on to if he wished in order to avoid more serious charges or potentially even any jail time. so these are the documents. they were obtained by nbc news reporter anna schechter tonight who is a superstar. because we've got these documents, i can tell you, this is a draft of the charge, the criminal charge that the special counsel's office was offering jerome corsi as the one count he could plead guilty to in order to avoid further criminal exposure. the draft shows they were considering bringing the charges in federal district court in washington, d.c. you see th

he was therefore secretly never really president, says jerome corsi. because of that past and everything else he is known for, jerome corsi says thing is no evidence to me that thing exists or is worth writing down, just as a general mathematical principle. but what nbc news has now obtained are apparently court documents that were prepared about mr. corsi by the special counsel's office to show him the way in which he was going to be criminally charged and the plea deal he could choose to sign on to if he wished in order to avoid more serious charges or potentially even any jail time. so these are the documents. they were obtained by nbc news reporter anna schechter tonight who is a superstar. because we've got these documents, i can tell you, this is a draft of the charge, the criminal charge that the special counsel's office was offering jerome corsi as the one count he could plead guilty to in order to avoid further criminal exposure. the draft shows they were considering wri ining bringing s in federal district court in washington, d.c. you see th

jerome corsi and roger stone. mueller is threatening them with what could be life in prison sentence. laying perjury trap after perjury trap around every corner. he wants them to do is test the lie against each over but there is no evidence, none of any crime being committed. we'll have a full legalal analysis tonight. this is a rogue prosecutor who lost any and all perspective, and any objectivity and appears to be flailing around all in a desperate attempt to indict anyone who doesn't say what he wants them to say. people are risking their lives in jail rather than tell lies they want told. jerome corsi and roger stone will be here and we'll talk to them and they will describe it in their own words. this is a full blown political persecution. tonight we have a lot of big news to cover. we have a mini monologue with the ongoing crisis at the southern border. get started. buckle up. a lot of information information tonight. time for the breaking news opening monologue. ♪ let's start with us tonight: it is not a

corsi. >> jerome corps. >> i corsi having conversations with roger stone. >> jerome corsi, rod rosenstein associate. >> the corsi story. >> jerome corsi is live on "the beat." thank you for being here. >> great to be here. >> you were offered a plea deal by bob mueller's team? >> that's correct. >> why did you reject it? >> it was fraudulent. it required me to lie and it required me to violate various regulations and even i thought commit fraud and i won't do that. i will not lie to keep myself out of jail and i realize that i could go to jail for the rest of my life. i'm 72 years old. i might die in jail but i'm still making this decision. >> you think what you're doing today increases the risk that you will be charged, be convicted, and die in jail? >> yes, i do. >> when you look at this plea negotiation, you did enter into some kind of discussions with them. what would you have accepted? what would a plea deal look like that you would take? >> i would have taken immunity. >> that's not a plea deal, that's just immunity. >> that's my terms they proposed this and said we want you to cons

jerome corsi would know first hand and he joins us tonight. mr. corsi, thank you very much for coming on. o >> my pleasure, tucker, thank you. >> tucker: you are not under oath, so our viewers will have to assess the accuracy of what you say. but before we get to your interactions with the mueller investigation, just the basics. have you ever had contact with julian assange? >> no, i've never met julian assange, never spoken c with him, never emailed him.an i've had no contact with julian assange whatsoever. >> tucker: have you ever had contact with russian intelligence or subverted -- knowingly subverted -- the interest of your own country? >> absolutely not. i've been a loyal american, iit had no contacts with russian intelligence, i have no business interest in russia, i have nothing to do with russia. i've neveruc been to russia. >> tucker: so tell me if i summarized what happened to you accurately. the special counsel's office gets a hold of your personal computer and your phone. they've got all the records, all the data, and they start askin

and jerome corsi is not giving up. so he will be indicted. i do not think the investigator has advanced the ball at all. jon: john sale is not that impressed but roger stone seems to be i don't know, a little nervous shall we say? reporter: we saw roger stone speak out about this yesterday. he was saying that jerome corsi was essentially being pressured. he never had this or he had never had this conversation with jerome corsi. i think a lot of observers would look at this and say, roger stone is being nervous and if he knows that jerome corsi did not say this, it would mean he would have had to have conversation with him. i want, i would want to know and ensure that robert mueller and want to know what conversations the two are having throughout the process. jon: everyone assumes that this investigation is winding down now that the president has given written answers to some of the questions by robert mueller. former deputy assistant attorney general says the question is, where does this go next and who does it target? >> i think the real qu

jerome corsi says he did not have it insider information. instead, he did his homework, connected the dots, and theorized that assange had podesta's emails. roger stone just told "tucker carlson tonight," "none of the emails cited prove i had advanced notice of those sources or content of either allegedly hacked or allegedly stolen emails published by wikileaks." wounded political gossip become a criminal activity" he also says his friend corsi is being harassed by special counsel, not for like, but for refusing to lie. tucker? >> tucker: thanks a lot, trace. appreciate that. so let's boil this down to its essence. jerome corsi is 72 years old. he it has a phd in political science from harvard. he's written two "new york times" best sellers about politics. jerome corsi is the kind of person who shouldn't probably should be happily retired by now. instead, as you just heard, he is facing potential in all felony charges from robert mueller. how did this happen? earlier this year, the independent counsel subpoenaed to corsi and sees his laptop

people might say that well, jerome corsi -- sounds like a small fish in all of this. but this could be problematic. >> could be very problematic. if corsi admits he worked with wikileaks and coordinated with them on those e-mails and gave that information to stone, that then creates a direct line between the russian hackers who carried out those hacks and the trump campaign. and then the question becomes who on the trump campaign, who else may have known? did the president know? >> alex, thank you very much. we appreciate it. >>> also tonight, there are plenty of aftershocks in the wake of president trump's politically charged holiday phone call with u.s. troops as well as more pushback on his treatment of u.s. intelligence agency's assessment that the saudi government is behind the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi. let's go to jeff zeleny, covering the president in florida. jeff, the president is in florida, but that has not stopped his critics from pouncing all over his performance yesterday. >> reporter: jim, good evening. the president's embrace, repeated embr

they were provided to us by jerome corsi, you see these e-mail exchanges between jerome corsi and roger stone in the summer of 2016 so i want to walk you through some of them. some of the things you need to know as you look at these e-mails, organization number one is wikileaks. so here's roger stone telling jerome corsi, get to founder of organization at the ecuadorian embassy in london and get the pending wikileaks e-mails. they'll deal with the foundation, allegedly he's referring to the clinton foundation there. so you can see how badly roger stone allegedly wanted to get his hands on these wikileaks e-mails. and then in august, august 2nd of 2016, this is before any of these john podesta e-mails are public, you get an e-mail from corsi to roger stone saying, "word is a friend in the embassy plans two more dumps, one shortly after i'm back, second in october. impact planned to be very damaging." and this e-mail goes on to suggest that some of this could have to do with podesta. so it shows you that these two guys are going back and forth talking about this at a time where a lot of t

we only have the version of events from jerome corsi. he does have a history of make things up. >> those podesta e-mails were released in 2016. mueller sent someone to prison today for lying. we're talking about george papadopoulos. what's the latest on that? >> reporter: right. george papadopoulos finally showed up to prison camp today in oxford, wisconsin. he's there to serve a 14-day jail term as a result of pleading guilty to lying to investigators. obviously, papadopoulos is a key figure here because he was the first one. the first one of 35 people that robert mueller's team has indicted or charged in this 18 month long investigation. more recent lly papadopoulos ha been singing a different tune. back in september of 2017 he showed remorse. he said he wanted a second chance to get his life back. more recently he around his wife have been attacking the special counsel saying they were railroaded. today you saw the video of him showing up in wisconsin where he and his wife, he said good-bye to his wife and he'll be gone for next 14 da

just think about jerome corsi and paul manafort in this way. so much of this by biography is destiny, these people are who they are. jerome corsi is the guy who was perfectly happy to be known throughout the world as the author of and the chief propagator of, beyond donald trump, the racist conspiracy theory that barack obama was not an american citizen, was born in kenya. this was his -- joyce is right. he doesn't care what he gets attention for. he'll get attention for whatever. he's a kooky man who found a way to get famous, he was the author of this nut house theory that brought him to prominence. then you have paul manafort. remember paul manafort, what has he done for the latter part of his career? he's in places like ukraine. he's in places doing dirty deals with crooked politicians, corrupt magistrates, dirty businessmen, russian mob roadsters, all these people. that guy is the guy who thinks about the fact that he could become a character in a double-agent plot that would somehow end up with it all working out fine for him and getting

but it's unclear what is going to happen now with jerome corsi. when i spoke to him earlier about what might happen next, he said "i don't know." >> good point. all right. thank you very much for that, air sara murray. >>> and sheldon lighthouse of rhode island is joining us, a key member of the senate judiciary committee. thank you very much for joining us. i want to begin with these late-breaking developments in the russia probe. do you expect an indictment against jerome corsi in the coming days? >> it would be hard not to expect it given the circumstances when you're negotiating a plea deal with somebody. if you're operating in good faith and when the -- when the individual refuses to agree to the plea agreement, you tend to go forward and not just drop everything, it's rare for a prosecutor of the stature to make up that he has a case some kind. so i think at this point you go forth and you test the proposition. and you get the grand jury to indict, and you go on from there. >> you're a former u.s. attorney, you served as the attorney general

he reached out to jerome corsi. here's what he said. >> we get to october 7, which was a very, very busy day for me here in new york. and roger calls me three times. we have three times we have a discussion. now, my recollection is that roger is saying, you know, this is going to be dropped and assange better get going. why don't get to your buddy assange and tell him to start? well, i didn't have any contact with assange, roger, going back to july and august may have, i may have led him on. >> now, corsi suggested these conversations were hours before the tape was released publicly. roger stone is vehemently denying all of this. in a statement to cnn, he says it is pure unadulterated bs. why would i ask him to contact assange, who even today he does not know logical or true. so, wolf, this is what investigators are still sifting through, a reminder. still no charges against jerome corsi. still no charges against roger stone. >> thank you, sarah murray, for reporting. >>> now to the breaking news that paul manafort,

let's start with jerome corsi and follow that immediately with roger stone talking about jerome corsi. >> i fully anticipate the next few days i will be indicted by mueller for some form or other of giving false information to the special counsel or to one of the other grand jury or however they want to do the indictment. >> it appears to me that he's been heavily pressured to bear false witness against me and perhaps other. i do know that he met with candidate trump and michael cohen during the campaign. i don't know what that was about. i don't know that this relates to me. i do know you could take e-mails and text messages out of context to try to create a false impression that would show that we had advanced notice of the content or source of either john podesta's e-mails, or the e-mails published by wikileaks that were allegedly hacked. >> so, glen, i'm going to let you take these dueling points of view from jerome corsi and roger stone. roger stone saying that he believes that jerome corsi has been, as he put it, heavily pressured to bear false witness against me. >> yeah, lawre

for jerome corsi it's a federal crime. no analog state charge to prosecute him. if he was promised a pardon or dangled the possibility of a pardon, maybe that explains why the plea negotiations would break down. otherwise it makes no sense. the document he released today makes clear, as you said, mueller has him dead to rites on false statements. >> cynthia, what seems striking to me is that mueller has established allegations in the criminal indictments of a criminal conspiracy to subvert the american election, to tip it over towards donald trump, away from hillary clinton, engineered by a foreign agent, russia under the direction of vladimir putin. open question is, were there american participanted who aided and abetted that conspiracy, members of the conspiracy to commit the federal crime, and what seems clear now is they are clearly zeroing in on some people they think kid did that. >> the e-mail you put up on the screen at the beginning on 2nd where they're talking about the information from assange, on august 3rd, the day after, stone has said he called an

jerome corsi, big deal? >> we don't know and we'll have to wait and see but i think it is interesting the connection point between jerome corsi's roger stone and the connection point there is wikileaks and the connection point there is gru. it takes some forensic sense to a very clear american connection point perhaps the for the first time. we have to wait and see, there have been a lot of stories that have turned out not to be true and some have. i think next week will get a lot more clarity. >> mike: chuck, what do you make of this? >> i don't know what to make of dr. jerome corsi who is kind of a flaky loose cannon on the deck of the american political scene. he's an old obama birther from way back, these comments he's making make it seem he is almost boasting as if he is going to be indicted to inflate his own importance in the situation. as tom points out, it's an extended chain of culpability if any that leaves all the way to russia. in the meantime, corsi and stone are denying that there was any fore

jerome corsi has said publicly he expected to be indicted by mueller for giving false information. i will talk with it with the congressman of the armed services committee. our correspondents, analysts and specialists are standing by. >>> first, the breaking news of the mueller investigation, laura jarrett is working that story for us. laura, what is the latest? >> reporter: jim, jerome corsi, an associate of both president trump and roger stone, confirming to cnn he is in plea negotiations with the special counsel's office. while corsi may not be a household name to most people, he could provide an answer to one of the most significant open questions left in the russia investigation, did the president or his campaign have advanced knowledge that wikileaks would release those stolen e-mails from hillary clinton's campaign chairman, john podesta, in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign. how could corsi speak to that? he developed a theory that wikileaks founder, julian assange, had access to the e-mails and corsi shared that theory with roger stone, something stone denies vehement

here he is with his friend jerome corsi, and you have manafort. he was a business partner with stone for years in washington. all this connected with with a guys are good at digging up dirt. and then we find out they're dealing with assange and wikileaks and the russians ultimately, and all this got to us as voters and as commentators, as news reporters, during the campaign. we were hearing about podesta, we were hearing about, you know, the commentators and little notes and embarrassments and stuff. why are we hearing about it? why was it making hillary's campaign look bad? because these guys were all involved with doing it. we're getting to the belly of the beast here, i think. >> podesta's e-mails didn't just come out during the campaign. they came out a mere few hours after the "access hollywood" tape that caught donald trump on camera talking about allegedly sexually assaulting women was released. >> not alleging. claiming to. >> exactly. commenting about it. >> more about that at the ended of show, by the way. >> and the timing of the e-mail

jerome corsi is saying they are trying to make me cover up lies. we have heard others who say they want to get us in perjury traps. this is the president now continuing to attack this investigation. >> by suggesting that the manafort -- that mueller is trying to get manafort and others to lie, he seems to be -- this is the president, he seems to be trying to discredit the russia probe so faearful of wha the conclusion might be. >> i think that's right. every focus is about liars, coercion, people being pressured to lie in order to fit into mueller's narrative. that's only coming from the president. we have others that are saying they are not willing to sign a plea agreement. that's part of the democracy and the justice department and how these investigations play out. there's been like this pr spin in general coming from the white house and his attorneys to try to discredit the investigation and sometimes you see it, it's working. you see it in folds. people think it's gone on too far. >> the sources tell dana bash that the president has answered t

let me tell you a little secret about jerome corsi and papadopoulos. neither of these guys had to talk to mueller at all. mueller couldn't have turned any screws on either one of these guys. they could have said guess what, we decline to talk to you and if mueller had called them to the grand jury, they could have said guess what, we are not -- we are going to plead the fifth amendment. these guys were not major players than drug administration who might be embarrassed if it came out that they took the fifth amendment. so these guys, i don't know what their problem is, why they felt like they had to talk to the government in the first place. >> laura: they were corroborating. they don't have anything to hide. maybe you're saying it is stupid. shouldn't talk to mueller. they have andrew weissmann and all the other people who hate trump. so i get it. i wouldn't have advised my client to talk to them but i think they feel like jerome corsi, didn't do anything. i am a journalist writing stuff i didn't do anything. you can indict a ham sandwich. >> you can.

. ♪♪ >>> jerome corsi is a liar, he is a proven liar. he was the first to lie about president obama's birth certificate, a lie that captivated donald trump. jerome corsi co-wrote a book of lies aimed at harming the carrie presidential campaign in 2004. the men who served with him regarded him as a hero but jerome's corsi's book pushed the lie he was not a hero. it was written to help the bush presidential campaign. and so jerome corsi is a proven professional liar, someone who lies in the normal course of his profession. the question tonight is did he lie under oath? jerome himself apparently believes that he did lie under oath and believes he is going to be prosecuted for perjury. after granting an interview with nbc news today in which he predicted he would be indicted by robert mueller, jerome corsi decided then to tell the world or his very small world on his daily live stream on youtube. >> i fully anticipate in the next few days i will be indicted by mueller for some form or other of giving false information to the special counsel

corsi, and at the center of this, jerome corsi. thanks for being with me. >>> joining me now, democratic congresswoman jackie spear of california, a member of the house intelligence committee. congresswoman, what do you think of the president's tweets this morning? >> i think the president is continuing in his path to try and undermine the mueller investigation. i think what you just went through with mr. corsi, that was part of a cesspool, they were all let loose by the trump campaign to peddle the russian propaganda. and i have no doubt in my mind that we will, at some point, when the mueller investigation is over, be able to put the dots all in a row and draw a line through them. there is clearly conspiracies all over the map here. >> there's a sort of interesting moment of kind of constitutional peril right now, this lame duck session, the president has -- --unified government democrats are take over in january. what is the plan or what is your assessment of where things stand vis-a-vis this period of peril in which you don't h

roger stone wanted these e-mails and it shows jerome corsi knew wikileaks had dirt and knew when they were going to drop it. >> yes, this seems to fly in the face of the claim that he doesn't know anything about wikileaks. >> word is, friend -- he is referring to julian assange, one shortly after i am back and second in october, and time to let podesta be exposed. that appears to be the game hackers are about. would not hurt to start suggesting hillary clinton old memory bad has stroke, neither here nor she well, and i expect much of the next dump focus -- he sure knows a lot for somebody not in such with wikileaks. >> he acknowledged there are some things i may have said that gave roger stone i knew something, but he insists i never spoke or met with julian assange. >> then how does he know? >> that's a great question. he says maybe he heard it somewhere, and he said he sort of came to connect the dots and figured out that wikileaks must have had john podesta's e-mails. corsi said prosecutors were not buying this explanation and it was a point of frustration when he was talking to ro

so this is this whole nexus of roger stone, jerome corsi, and julian assange, that we're sort of seeing all of the simultaneous movement around all three of them. we know that robert mueller has been laser focused on roger stone since the spring. he's up to, i think, seven or nine roger stone associates who have testified in front of the grand jury. corsi is going around, you know, talking about being indicted, leaking these documents that were related to a plea agreement that appears to have fallen apart. and then in london, remember, over the last week we've seen some significant new movement around julian assange, that the ecuador -- that ecuador has removed the ambassador who has overseen the embassy where julian assange has been hiding since 2012 and is blocking access to julian assange's lawyers to the embassy. so that's leading to some speculation that perhaps the embassy is preparing to hand over julian assange and that it sort of is all about this group of people, roger stone, jerome corsi, and julian assange, who appear now to have been in some sort of regular contact around t

jerome corsi's lawyer also declined to comment. there's a number of areas they could go from perjury to making false claims to obstruction of justice. we don't know exactly where this is going to go, but we know obviously that he's one of nine or so associates who have gone in already. and what this tells us, wolf, is that the special counsel is homing in on roger stone and his circle and jerome corsi appears to be the first to fall. >> we've got a graphic of all the individuals who have been called and already appeared. roger stone apparently has not been questioned by the special counsel. investigators are looking into whether corsi was a back channel to wikileaks. potentially how problematic is that for the trump administration and the trump campaign? >> that's a big deal because based on the questions they have been asking jerome corsi and a couple of witnesses, they believe that jerome corsi or someone else was another back channel to wikileaks and julian assange to roger stone. roger stone has previously said that randy credi

you talked to jerome corsi and said i won't take this deal. put him into context for those who may not understand he is central to the deal. >> jerome corsi is the stone that roger stone hired him to do research. jerome corsi said the reason roger stone talked about the podesta e-mails is because of what i did for him. it was their business dealings and that's the research you provided. he felt like he may have heads up about the podesta e-mails coming out. now corsi has been in there for interviews and the grand jury and handed over documents and his computer. he acknowledges that his brain became mush along the way. some of the things he said didn't match up with the e-mails and he was not with holding things with the specificity the office wanted, but he said i was not willfully lying and he was incensed that they offered had him this plea deal under seal. he felt like he couldn't agree. i said what happens next? he said i don't know. >> i don't know. as we noted, george papadopoulos is reporting to prison today. it's only 14 days, but cors

tonight jerome corsi is climbing up as stone may be climbing under the bus. >>> and serial fraud claim. the president suggested grocery shoppers need ids to buy their breakfast as he goes to wild, new extremes in his unproven claims of illegal voting. does he really believe people are putting on disguises so they can vote more than once? >>> we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." ♪ >>> this is "cnn breaking news." >>> we're following breaking news on new instability inside the trump white house where high-powered heads could roll at any moment. in a new interview tonight president trump says he will decide the fate of his embattled homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen shortly. others may be on the chopping block. sources tell cnn mr. trump is isolated and furious at just about everyone as democrats get ready to take over the house and robert mueller gets ready to issue his report on the russia probe. this hour, i'll talk with how judiciary committee member ted lieu, and our correspondents and

who is jerome corsi? he's a write are known for himself right-wing conspiracy theories and for his work with info wars and he's more importantly an associate of the president's long-time confidante roger stone. allen, what could jerome corsi provide to them? >> well, based on the sourcing close to corsi, it seems as if he is indicating that he's prepared to be charged with a crime stemming from the mueller probe. this really draws a line, or one can assume, a line connecting corsi with stone and the line that investigators haven't yet shown is the line leading from stone to members of the campaign or to a president trump. stone is a long-time associate of the president, involving the information from wikileaks, how it was disseminated, if it was ever given to any members of the campaign, if it had advanced awareness of it. stone's past statements made it seep as though he did have the advanced notice, though he has changed his statement in recent months and weeks. the corsi developments are important as t

are jerome corsi and roger stone important to the mueller investigation or not? >> reporter: well, that remains to be seen, but the reality is mueller has spent a ton of time, he's spent months interviewing them, reviewing all of their communications. so, actually, yes, clearly they are important. i think the two main pillars of the investigation they're looking into, the two events, are the wikileaks dump and any collusion related to that, possible collusion related to that, and the trump tower meeting and if there was any collusion there. taking the first one, wikileaks, roger stone is not just a conservative activist who stumbled into this, he was actively trying to find out what julian assange had because he knew that that was going to help the trump campaign tremendously. he says, look, i'm a political operative and of course i wanted to get my hands on those e-mails. so he was reaching out to people like jerome corsi to see if he would maybe go to the ecuadorian embassy in london where assange lives to go meet with him and find out information or send a thi

let's start with jerome corsi for a second. there's document online that supposed to be what they were working on drafting before this plea deal with the mueller team fell apart. it references people not by name but it would seem to suggest we're taking wikileaks and julian assange. corsi said he's not going to lie. >> first, i kind of doubt that. he's a fabulous from way back. it's more likely that mueller doubted his, corsi's statement. corsi saying he forgot about this until this new evidence came out. potentially he forces mueller to an indictment of both him and stone which will take longer and he hoped before to go from corsi to get him to cooperate as against stone. now there's a prospect of a trial. >> shannon: if these they end up getting indicted and trouble, do you think it will be a process time? do you think they'll get in trouble on substance? most of what we've seen from the mueller team has been people who said something, wanted to change their statement or said something else and they lied to federal agents. >>

he's asking jerome corsi to reach out to julian assange. he's not involved in the trump campaign. >> laura: le has a book out. this is a new story today in the "new york times." i got to put up this headline real quick. manafort's attorney has been briefing trump's attorneys on what he told mueller. for what? welcome to the world of information sharing among lawyers. big deal. >> that's right. defense clients do this all the time. criminal cases they do it in investigations. this is what's done. this is it's come. to the larger point that i was making, to your point about the attorney general, these issues, you look at the steel dossier, christopher steel, you look at the gentlemen at the state department, winier who is pushing it. you look at adam walderman who is also pushing it. i don't think the mueller investigation is going to look at. if we had an attorney general, they could certainly make sure that that was subject of a serious investigation. as long as you don't have someone making a priority it's not going to happen. >> laura: al

jerome corsi's name is relatively new. they are not just looking in the john podesta in the barrel stone. there was also a lot of interest in the news conference on july 27th, 2016 where donald trump says to reporters and the world because it was broadcast on national television russia, if you're listening i'd love to see hillary clinton's e-mails. they are looking into why donald trump would say that at that time. was he prompted by some knowledge of wikileaks or did it just come out of the blue? it seemed to the folks that sat for interviews the special counsel's office was interested because that sort of statement didn't seem like something someone would just make up on the spot. >> that's right. by the way, i don't really believe in coincidences so the notion it came out of blue strikes me as fanciful. there's some chain of events, some chain of people between russian military intelligence and wikileaks and gucicifer and the trump campaign. the mueller team is trying to establish who is in that chain. to nanna's report

jerome corsi is one of the most honorable, honest individuals on the planet. no one can remember ever word, every nuance of everything they play have said over the last ten years. no human being on earth. when they get an opportunity to dig through dozens and dozens and thousands of pages of comments, they will pick out one thing they want to use to run up the flag pole to make a case out of it. this is nothing but a witchhunt looking for a witch and they haven't found a witch in nearly two years, sean. that's all it is. >> i believe, joe, if jerome corsi wanted to make it easy on himself, paul manafort wanted a lessor sentence. all they had to do was say what was wanted. we have mueller and his pitbull, weissman, have a history of this. >> here is the deal. you are absolutely right. both of these men could give mueller the lies that he wants if they wanted to make life easy for themselves. you bring up weissman. andrew weissman has a reputation for being one of the most ethical prosecutors in the country. he has been rebuked many times. remember, andrew weiss

exactly what jerome corsi knows and what it means for the president is not clear tonight. what is clear, it is not good news for mister trump. kevin cork is outside the president's florida resort. >> reporter: jerome corsi is not directly tied to donald trump but is an associate of roger stone who was a trump advisor in 2016. what we do know is as he continues to create a situation which could lead to a plea deal with the mueller team that is newsworthy and everyone can agree it may not be very good news for the president. >> the written answers to the witchhunt that has been going on forever, no collusion, no nothing. >> reporter: the president remained steadfast in denial of any russian collusion connected to his campaign the special counsel's office continues to tighten the net on a number of individuals close to the trump orbit. the latest, jerome corsi who like roger stone has been linked to the controversial website info wars and is in talks with the mueller team about a possible plea deal stemming from the ongoing russia probe. the mueller team questioned him as par

we're looking at people like jerome corsi, lesser players like papadopoulos. we're looking at roger stone, probably on the list for the guillotine here. all these people going to prison for a significant amount of years looking ahead. and then the president of the united states sits there. is this a rico situation, barbara? if the mastermind walks, as david thinks anything is possible here, if the mastermind walks where 20 people go away to prison for hard time, i think history will have a hard time figuring this baby out. >> you know, in terms of putting together a rico, you'd have to show there is an association for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity, pattern of racketeering activity. i don't know they're at that point. we have a number of different individuals who pleaded guilty to crimes. until we put it together we don't know what we have. but there are sometimes political offices used for the purpose of engauging in criminal activity. it's not just here and there, but a pattern and that's the purpose of the organization. i'm not sure that rober

jerome corsi, associate of long-time associaroger stone wi accept a plea deal. this has been going one way and the other and all playing out very publicly, oddly enough. >> now very publicly. jerome corsi did an interview this morning with a conservative outlet that basically explains why he will not take this plea. he explains that the special counsel offered him a plea deal essentially that it would be one count to lying and that he's refusing to take that plea deal because essentially if he does, he's lying about the fact that they're saying that he's lying. it's very confusing. he says he knew about the e-mails and that julian assange had the poddesta ooh e-mails and was going to release them in october. in this interview, calling it the october surprise and, of course, julian assange would know how to do that. he gives a good explanation of how he knew about these e-mails and says he had no knowledge of julian assange, never spoke to him about it, never communicated to anyone about it. corsi says the special counsel has been asking questions about whether o

you mentioned corsi and that's jerome corsi could become a witness against roger stone. >> not a witness. he's a birther. he's a conspiracy theorist. he's not going to be a witness. as a defense attorney, i love when they put on people like jerome corsi and manafort. even when it's corroborated. they're so much better off not putting on the witnesses and using the information to make the case. >> let's just talk about information. we're getting information from paul manafort. we're getting information perhaps from jerome corsi. we're getting information from gates and cone. we're getting information from a lot of people. >> it is. i think the report is going to be devastating to the president. i know the president's team is working on a response to the report. at some point when the report is made public, that's a very hard question considering the new attorney general who has the authority to decide when and under what circumstance to make it public, it will be made public with a response alongside. the president will say it's political. there's their account and our account. the americ

corsi with the special counsel, and they learned that some of these documents that jerome corsi was going to essentially sign, don, really had a reference to the president, in which they said that someone was in touch with the president. and just the fact that it mentioned the president by name when no one else was mentioned in the document really upset the president and his legal team. keep in mind they were working on this take-home test, remember the answers, the written answers to the mueller questions that they were getting ready to respond to. this is just before thanksgiving, so they learned about this jerome corsi documents that sara murray got her hands on today, so they put a stop to it. they said, we are not going to respond. we are not going to send back the written questions to the mueller team until we get a hold of what exactly is happening here. and i think this is what happened behind the scenes. there were these conversations with the mueller team to try to understand whether or not there was something else at work here. and really what it shows us is that they're

jerome corsi leaked that draft agreement. how upset would you be as an investigator and prosecutor if the person you were negotiating with released this to the press? >> it's really poor form. bad move. i would be pretty upset. you expect with a cooperating witness, we're now working together. i know it is a draft. perhaps hadn't been finalized, but you just don't do that. it is really a bad move by mr. corsi and his lawyers. >> and does it hurt the investigation? does it compromise what mueller and his team are trying to do? >> well, it could. it could have some effect. but, look, the team knows where it's going. i have no doubt about that. they have been in business for all these months. they have accumulated an enormously impressive record, the indictments especially some among months ago. now they know a lot. folks affiliated with the trump organization, no, this is a material setback? probably not. it is probably just an annoyance and, hey, we can't perhaps deal with this guy. >> a magnified version of that is paul manaf

: prosecutors believe other jerome corsi tipped off roger stone months before wikileaks released thousands of emails stolen from hillary clinton's campaign according to a document offered to jerome corsi obtained by the washington post, a friend plans two more dumb setting the impact of the release was planned to be very damaging, julian assigns in the ecuadorian embassy since 2012, corsi said he rejected the offer to plead guilty to a false statements charge, not only misled investigators but -- >> this is a political witch and. because i did not have a contact with julian assigns -- assange but i possessed his emails, and told many people in august. >> reporter: paul manafort reportedly involved with julian assange. going to the guarding he met with assange in 2013, 2015 and march 2016 just before he joined the trump campaign. paul manafort says the full report is false, donald from weighing in, the mueller witchhunt is a total disgrace. outgoing similar tweets, wait until it comes out how horribly and viciously they are treating people, ruining lives but refusing to lie. mueller is a co