I was scheduled to appear at the Grand Jury on Friday, September 21, 2018, in Washington, D.C. What I experienced that week was pure hell.
David Gray and I had traveled back to Washington on Sunday, September 16, to be in Washington for the FBI to pick us up at the Mayflower Hotel for a scheduled 10:00 a.m. interview with the Special Prosecutor. While I felt somewhat more prepared, having had a chance to review my 2016 emails, I was certain my interrogation would intensify.
With David and I parked once again in the interrogation room with no windows, Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zelinsky, and Andrew Goldstein filed into the room with their army of FBI agents for another “Duke It Out” session.
Almost immediately, Zelinsky launched into what I expected was the point on which this entire exercise was bound to fail.
“When you were in Italy on your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, did you provide Roger Stone with information about Wikileaks?” Zelinsky asked pointedly.
“Yes, I believe I told Roger Stone that I thought Assange had Podesta’s emails,” I responded.
“Who was your source of information?” Zelinsky asked in an angry tone.
In the conversations David Gray had with the prosecutors in between meetings, David explained that I believed I had simply connected the dots, figuring out from open source information that Assange had Podesta’s emails, that Assange would release those emails as an “October Surprise,” and that Assange would release the Podesta emails in a serial drip-by-drip fashion with WikiLeaks releasing new Podesta emails every day in October right up until the election.
The prosecutors replied to David what became the refrain they repeated over and over: “We have evidence that Doctor Corsi knew in August 2016 that Assange had Podesta’s emails. We can prove that Corsi knew Assange would hold these emails until October 2016, and that he would release them drip-drip fashion over a series of days right up until the election is held.”
David reported to me that Zelinsky used over and over again the legal phrase in Latin, “Ad Seriatum,” a term that in Latin means “one after the other.” David said Zelinsky seemed very proud to make this pronouncement in Latin, as if the Latin made the pronouncement sound more official that, in his opinion, I had to be lying. Zelinsky insisted to David that there was no possible way I could have figured out Assange had Podesta’s email with this degree of accurate pre-knowledge unless I had a source connected to Assange who told me Assange had Podesta’s emails and how Assange planned to use them.
Over the next few hours, Zelinsky and Rhee would use any number of techniques to push me to remember a source. Finally, Zelinsky said, “Doctor Corsi, many people find they have to put themselves back in time to a particular date and place to remember precisely what happened.” Zelinsky suggested I should go back to my trip to Italy, putting myself mentally back to July and August 2016.
I put my hand up to my forehead, closed my eyes, and tried to engage seriously in this regression exercise. “I think I see someone telling me about Assange,” I finally said, trying hard to imagine myself in Italy talking about WikiLeaks.
“Was it a man or a woman?” Rhee asked, with obvious enthusiasm that the prosecutors may finally be breaking though a mental block they presumed I had.
“I think it was a man,” I responded. Then, I realized how ridiculous this was. As I was beginning to invent people and make things up just to answer their persistent questions. But it really struck me as preposterous that a serious U.S. DOJ prosecutor like Zelinsky would ask me to use the type of regression technique used by hacks promising to unlock for gullible clients past-lives embellishments to enrich otherwise troubled present existences.
“I think if we continue this, I will be telling you that next I was Alexander the Great in a former life,” I explained to Zelinsky.
Truthfully, Zelinsky’s regression technique struck me as being worthy of a carnival trick and I wondered whether next Zelinsky would suggest putting me under hypnosis. I felt silly going through this carnival exercise in front of three of Mueller’s top prosecutors and an army of FBI there to record my every word and to analyze my body language to tell if I was telling the truth or lying.
Repeatedly, Rhee and Zelinsky instructed me to “tell us the truth,” followed by the instruction, “when you can’t remember, just say that you can’t remember.”
But when I explained that my best recollection was that I had no source that linked me to Assange, all three prosecutors—Rhee, Zelinsky, and Goldstein—appeared to jump to the conclusion that I was lying. In other words, it did me no good to explain to them that my best recollection was that I figured out Assange had Podesta’s emails and, although I may have had a source to Assange, I could not remember a source.
“Who are your protecting?” Rhee and Zelinsky joined in tag-team challenging me, with their intensity and anger rising at every question. “Are you protecting Roger Stone? Are you protecting Donald Trump?”
I told them that I was there voluntarily, and I was trying to work with the Special Prosecutor, but I would not lie to invent an answer they obviously wanted to hear.
The more this interrogation went on, the more confused I became.
At one point, Zelinsky decides to try regression techniques.
“Sometimes people remember when they regress themselves mentally back into a period of time,” Zelinsky instructs me. “Try going back to 2016. Imagine yourself in Italy, communicating with Roger Stone about Assange.”
The prosecutors have a whole list of people, including unrelated business contacts, that I was working with in 2016. One by one, I am questioned, “Did you tell this person what Assange had? How about that person?” After I surrendered my computers and my Time Machine, Mueller’s investigation knew every person and company with whom I had a consulting contract, plus numerous professional contacts, like Wall Street investment analyst Charles Ortel, with whom I had undertaken since 2015 an investigation of Clinton Foundation financial scandals.
Finally, at the end of another grueling day of third-degree questioning, the FBI dropped us back completely exhausting to the Mayflower Hotel at about 6:00 p.m. EST. David and I packed up and headed back to New Jersey.
On the ride home, I told David that Mueller’s prosecutors were questioning me like I was a criminal. I had volunteered to speak with Mueller and the FBI. I had turned over my computers and my Time Machine. I had signed consent forms for Mueller and the FBI to examine all my email accounts. I signed additional consent forms for Mueller and the FBI to access my Verizon phone accounts, including my cellphone accounts. Verizon had refused to turn over my phone call records to me and now Mueller refused to let me see my phone records, even though Verizon had given my call records to Mueller.
Zelinsky and Rhee were asking me very detailed questions about my activities in 2016, yet they refused to share with me the evidence they had. It soon became clear to me that even though I had restored the end of 2016 from the Time Machine to my MacBook Pro, I still did not have all my 2016 emails. Yet the prosecutors insisted on me answering questions when they had the full detail on emails about which I was being questioned and Mueller’s team refused to allow me to see those emails before answering.
I still do not understand why Mueller insisted upon playing this stupid interrogation game worthy of the Gestapo, the KGB, or the Red Guard under Mao. Increasingly, I felt like I was a U.S. soldier captured in the Korean War being interrogated by the Communist Chinese. All this lacked was the sleep deprivation, the torture beatings, and the blinding white interrogation that blocked me from seeing my inquisitors.
Whenever I tried to explain to Mueller’s prosecutors and the FBI the context of their questions, Zelinsky or Rhee accused me of “trying to create a narrative.” If I pursued whether this person or that person may have told me something, Mueller’s prosecutors and the FBI accused me of lying, of giving them false information so as to mislead them. My pleas that I was just trying to figure out what happened in 2016 fell on deaf ears.
During one of the breaks when the prosecutors and the FBI were out of the room angry, I told David that I was being questioned as if I were a criminal, not like someone who was trying to help them. Mueller and the FBI had everything, including emails I did not have, complete phone call records that I had not seen because both Verizon and Mueller had refused to give them to me.
These “grand inquisitors”—a Dostoyevsky term I kept thinking about—expected me to have perfect recall the first time, even in response to their granular questions about events that happened two years ago. I was expected to have excellent recall of 2016 emails that the grand inquisitors would not allow me to see, so I might refresh my memory. And if I made the slightest mistake, got a name wrong, or forgot about somebody being at a meeting, the grand inquisitors put on angry faces and began yelling at me, in increasingly strident tones, reminding me I could be sent to prison for giving the FBI false information.
I told David this inquisition was reminding me of a game of twenty questions in which you committed felonies and could be imprisoned for false answers. I took up a yellow pad and said to David, “This nightmare is like a legal pad where Zelinsky holds the pad up to me, so I can see only one side, and he writes a number on the other side. I have to guess the number Zelinsky wrote otherwise I have lied to the FBI.” My point was that I had to answer precisely to Mueller’s team and the FBI about emails, documents, phone calls, and testimony where I was not allowed to see the evidence the grand inquisitors had.
I took David’s legal pad, held one side up to him, and proceeded to demonstrate. “I’m writing a number on the other side that you can’t see,” I told David. “What is the number?” David guessed the number, “Eight.”
When I turned the pad around, David could see that I had not written a number, instead I just went through the motions, so it looked like I was writing a number. “What’s the point?” I asked David. “I came in here to cooperate, to help Mueller and the FBI figure out the evidence they might have. Instead, I’m being interrogated like a criminal.”
I realized it was inevitable that I would fall for the perjury trap. The Mueller prosecutors and the FBI participating in the inquisition had gotten me to do so the first day, in the first hours. I realized that was a Mueller strategy trap. Once I had made a mistake of memory, Mueller had what he needed to prosecute me for the crime of lying to the FBI. This was done, I believe, so I would always feel the heat, so I would confess anything to Mueller that Mueller wanted. But I never had any intention of lying, so this stupid game was unnecessary. I have a history of telling the truth, even when the truth is not always in my favor.
When it was lunchtime, Mueller and the FBI put on their coats and went out for lunch. David and I did not wat to leave the FBI building for fear of being seen and hounded by the press. So, I stayed in the conference room without windows while David searched to see if the building had a cafeteria. I spent countless hours in that interrogation room alone, while the Mueller team and the FBI walked out infuriated at some answer I had given, and David was called into a separate conference room to plead mercy and ask them to continue without arresting me on the spot.
Left alone for hours in the conference room, I did not have my cellphone. I did not have my laptop. I had no book to read. I was left to pace around that conference table for hours, alone but always aware the opaque electronic eye on the ceiling could well be broadcasting to FBI in another room who were observing and reporting on my every move. Wondering what was going on was driving me insane, worrying that my fate was being decided in the next room. Would I be arrested on the spot? Taken from this secret interrogation room to prison, handcuffed. Would David have to call my wife in New Jersey to tell me he was trying to get standing to practice law in Washington, so he could bail me out?
In a futile attempt to ease my anxiety, I used these hours left alone, prisoner in that interrogation room with no windows and a door through with I could not leave without being accompanied by the FBI (even to go to the restroom), I decided to count the number of light boxes recessed into the ceiling. I counted the number of carpet tiles there were on the floor.
I studied the two large conference tables in the room and discovered they did not match. Both tables were old, well used, most likely recovered from government surplus. The chairs around the conference table looked like they came from one set, but it was obvious the chairs too were used. I concluded the chairs came from a different office set that either of the two conference tables because the heavy scuff marks on the arms of the chair did not match how the chairs bumped into this set of two conference tables.
Driving home with David, I felt as if I might be experiencing what my parents had politely called a “nervous breakdown.” I was a psychological mess and the worst part was that I knew we had to come back on Thursday for me to testify to the grand jury on Friday. I expected that experience to be even more terrifying. I was concluding that I should advise no U.S. citizen to ever talk to the FBI, even with an army of defense attorneys at the table.
The way the FBI plays this stupid grand inquisitor game violates all Constitutional freedoms. I was not being given a right to see evidence that was being used to incriminate me, if only because I tried to remember what the evidence was about, and I happened to remember imperfectly.
We had expected the prosecutors would want to interview us on Tuesday, or surely on Thursday before scheduled grand jury appearance on Friday.
But instead, the prosecutors told David that I was not needed until Friday morning. Left with the prospect of cooling our heals for several days in Washington with nothing particular to do, we decided we would return home.
Before returning to Washington for the Grand Jury, I made an appointment with my heart specialist. I have been under medical treatment for high blood pressure and hyper-tension for years. After a thorough examination, the physician prescribed for me a relatively mild sedative. The cardiologist advised me that I must rest and that the stress could trigger a stroke or a heart attack if I were not careful. He reminded me that at seventy-two years old, my body could not withstand the level of stress I have experienced even ten years ago, when I was detained in Kenya for going there in 2008 to investigate Obama’s birth certificate.
Since meeting with my cardiologist, I have not been able to shake the increasing worry that under this much tension from Mueller, I could well have a heart attack or a stroke. I started finding it difficult to sleep. Around 10:00 p.m. each night, I found myself collapsing of exhaustion. But, after getting enough rest for my mind to become active again, I found myself coming fully awake at around 1:00 a.m. and unable to go to sleep for the rest of the night. My inability to sleep affected my wife, who began suffering sleep deprivation herself. Truly, dealing with Mueller had become a serious health problem for me and my wife together, especially with both of us in our senior years.
On Friday morning, September 21, 2016, the FBI took David and me to the Federal Courthouse in Washington. We entered the building through the basement and passed security screening in the garage. David and I were taken upstairs to a smaller inside conference room, adjoining the grand jury room. Here we were to meet with the prosecutors to prepare for the grand jury.
I understood that David would not be allowed to go with me to the grand jury as my lawyer. He would have to wait here, in this small conference room, for me to return after my testimony was over, or to meet with me privately if I should need a break during my grand jury testimony to confer with him.
When Zelinsky, Rhee, and Goldstein joined us in the small conference room, I was shocked to see that Rhee was wearing what appeared to be an expensive, possibly designer-made see-through blouse. Maybe my seventy-two years were showing but I had never imagined any woman would appear before a grand jury exposing her breasts to public view through a see-through blouse. I decided to refrain from a detailed observation or analysis of her obviously visible anatomy, deciding instead to concentrate on maintaining eye-contact when addressing her that morning.
Zelinsky began the questioning by asking me if I recalled while I was vacationing with my wife and family in Italy telling Roger Stone that Assange yet had Podesta emails that he planned to make public in October. I acknowledged that I knew in advance that Assange had Podesta’s emails and that I did tell this to Roger Stone in August 2016, while I was still in Italy.
Next, Zelinsky focused on the email Roger Stone sent me on August 30, 2016, asking me to call him. As we discussed earlier, that led me to write a “cover-up memo” for him on John Podesta, suggesting that Roger’s infamous Twitter post about “Podesta’s time in the barrel” was a reference to my research about John and Tony Podesta’s money dealings with Russia. Roger wanted to disguise his tweet, suggesting “Podesta’s time in the barrel” was not a reference to any advanced knowledge Stone may have had from me, when I began telling Stone from Italy in emails dated earlier in August 2016 that I believed Assange had Podesta emails.
“We’ve examined your computer Doctor Corsi,” Zelinsky grilled me. “And we know that the next day, August 31, 2016, your birthday, you began at 7:30 a.m. to write that memo for Stone.”
Before returning to Washington to appear before the grand jury, I had taken the time to research the file of my 2016 writing drafts that I had restored to my laptop from the Time Machine. I found that the file that I labeled, “ROGER STONE background PODESTA version 1.0 Aug. 31, 2016” was time-stamped for 12:17 p.m. that day. But I decided not to quibble with Zelinsky, so I agreed.
“Then, Doctor Corsi, we find from your computer that the first thing you did was to find a series of open source articles on Podesta and Russia that you could use in writing your memo for Roger Stone,” Zelinsky said, pressing forward. “Is that correct?”
I vaguely remembered doing this, so once again I agreed.
Truthfully, I was astounded because it seemed as if the FBI had studied me down to knowing the key strokes that I had used on my computer to do Google searches for articles. I realized my Google file would have much information about my locations and my Internet searches, but the way Zelinsky drilled down on how I wrote this article was shocking.
Repeatedly Zelinsky had warned me that I had no idea how truly extensive the Special Counselor’s investigation had been. Now, I imagined an army of FBI computer specialists at Quantico mapping out my every electronic communication in 2016, including my emails, my cellphone calls, and my use of the laptop and the Internet to conduct my research and write my various articles and memos.
“Yes, I recall that I wanted to find additional material to structure the article, other than the piece in the Wall Street Journal that Peter Schweizer published on July 31, 2016, and the report ‘From Russia with Money’ that his Government Accountability Institute published the next day,” I answered.
“Why did you write the article in this manner?” Zelinsky asked.
“Because I wanted to create the impression that I had been researching Podesta and Russia a long time,” I continued.
“But in fact, you had not been researching Podesta and Russia for a long time,” Zelinsky said, continuing to drill down. “Isn’t that true?”
“Correct,” I answered. “I had read Schweizer’s pieces earlier in the week and I was surprised to realize how much documentation there was in previously published open source material about the millions of dollars Podesta and Hillary were paid for sharing military technology, including the hypersonic missile technology Russia has used to make a nuclear weapon that cannot be shot down by U.S. missile defense.”
“So, you knew this was a lie when you wrote the Podesta email?” Zelinsky asked, moving in for the kill on this line of questioning.
“Yes, I did,” I admitted. “In politics, it’s not unusual to create alternative explanations to deflect the attacks of your political opponents.”
Besides, the memo had a strong element of truth in that Podesta had gotten up to $35 million-dollar investment from the Russians plus stock through a shell corporation Russia had established in the Netherlands for money laundering all as an apparent pay-off for selling to Russia the U.S. military technology under the ruse of Hillary’s “Re-Set” policy as secretary of state.
But Zelinsky was completely uninterested to learning more about the possible crimes Hillary and Podesta may have committed, for millions of dollars in return. All Zelinsky wanted to know was that I wrote that memo to provide Stone with an alternative explanation for his “Podesta’s time in the barrel” tweet.
Public relations work is not specifically considered lying. It was considered completely appropriate when British Petroleum, a company that had been exploiting petroleum resources worldwide for decades at the behest of the British Government, changed its name to “BP,” with the slogan “Beyond Petroleum.”
I had worked my way through college by working, following my father’s career by working for public relations. My father arranged for me to be hired by Edward Howard & Co., a public relations firm in Cleveland, Ohio. There I had worked on Republican Seth Taft’s mayoral campaign against Carl Stokes, who in 1967 first African American elected mayor of a major U.S. city. At that time, I was an undergraduate, finishing my last year of college at Case Western Reserve University.
I still do not consider what I wrote for Stone to have been immoral or illegal. Zelinsky was the one not playing fair by granting to Hillary the right to use public relations to cover up any number of possible crimes. But when it came to me and Roger Stone, we were criminals for having engaged in the type of public relations positioning that is standard operating procedures for political campaigns in the United States today.
Next Zelinsky began asking whether I was aware that Stone had used my Podesta memo as the basis for his testimony under oath before the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, 2017.
Here, David Grey asked for a break, so he could confer with the prosecutors. After a few minutes, David returned and informed me that Rhee, Zelinsky, and Goldstein had agreed to give me a grant of immunity for my testimony here. David explained to me that I could be criminally charged for subornation of perjury for my role in creating a “cover story” about Podesta that Stone used in his testimony under oath to the House Intelligence Committee.
We proceeded to execute the verbal agreement, with Zelinsky assuring us the written agreement would arrive for our signatures in a few minutes. The agreement for “limited use immunity” arrived shortly and was signed by all after being read. David had explained to me that the grant of immunity extended only to protect me in that my testimony to the grand jury on the House Intelligence Committee could not be used to prosecute me for the crime of subornation of perjury.
When he was finished getting down my testimony on the various Podesta cover up documents I had written for Stone, Zelinsky shifted to drilling down on the coincidence of Assange holding the release of the Podesta file until after the Washington Post reported the Billy Bush tape on October 7, 2016.
“Did Roger Stone tell you in advance that the Billy Bush tape was going to be released?” Zelinsky asked me.
“Yes, he did,” I admitted. Although I could not remember exactly when Roger told me, or the precise substance of the discussion, I remembered Roger told me before the Washington Post went to press with the Billy Bush tape that the tape was coming and that it would be a bombshell. I recall that I knew in advance that the Donald Trump could be heard on the tape bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.
“And was Mr. Stone disturbed about the release of the Billy Bush tape?” Zelinsky asked.
“Yes,” I answered. Stone’s strategy to have Trump win involved gaining a larger than expected percentage of women voters. Obviously, Trump’s comments on the tape would be especially offensive to women.
“What did Mr. Stone want you to do to blunt the impact of the Billy Bush tape?” Zelinsky asked.
“He wanted me to see if I could get Assange to begin dropping the Podesta emails on top of the Washington Post exposé,” I admitted. Obviously, Stone wanted Assange to begin dropping the Podesta emails because Stone knew the explosive content that we expected the Podesta emails to contain would compete with the Billy Bush tape for the news cycle. This would blunt the negative impact on the Trump campaign of the Billy Bush revelations.
“What did you do in response to Mr. Stone’s request?” Zelinsky asked, moving in for the kill a second time.
“I do not recall that I had any source in contact with Assange that I could instruct,” I told Zelinsky.
I continued: “But I believe I may have posted some tweets and I believe I told the daily World Net Daily news team conference call that the Billy Bush tape was coming. I’m sure I asked that if anybody had a way to reach Assange, we should pass the alert to Assange, so he could begin dropping the Podesta file right away.”
Having gotten the answers he wanted, after drilling me in rapid-fire fashion, Zelinsky announced we were ready to go to the grand jury.
Entering the grand jury for the first time was another frightening experience. I had never before testified to a grand jury and I knew David Grey would not be permitted to accompany me.
The grand jury room was about the size of an average university graduate school classroom. It was tiered with the grand jury members sitting in rows that reached from the front of the classroom to the back wall. As I entered the room and scanned the grand jury members, it was immediately obvious that the grand jury was made up Washington middle class residents, consisting predominately of minorities. The back row against the wall consisted entirely of African American males who looked angry.
My guess was that I was guilty from the start with these grand jury members. If any of them knew my past writings—and I guessed the Special Counsel had briefed the grand jury on me and my background in preparation for my testimony—I guessed these people hated my politics and considered me a “conspiracy theory” liar, maybe even a member of some “white supremacy hate group.” After all, I had served as Washington Bureau Chief or Alex Jones and Infowars.com, an arch-enemy of the hard-left.
In the front of the grand jury room, I was shown a seat behind a long table. To my immediate right sat the stenographer, ready to make a word-for-word transcript of my testimony. To my left, Rhee and Goldstein sat. At my far left, Zelinsky stood at a podium. It was clear that Zelinsky would lead the questioning. From time to time, Rhee and Goldstein would whisper to one another, after which they passed a written note to Zelinsky.
The foreman of the grand jury asked me to rise and I took an oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
Zelinsky’s questions were all precisely phrased. In a courtroom, the questions might have been considered leading questions.
“Doctor Corsi, did Mr. Stone telephone you on the evening of August 30, 2016?” My answer was yes.
Each question telegraphed the answer that Zelinsky expected, with the questions mimicking the questions Zelinsky had asked me in the small conference room that morning. When the questioning began, I maintained eye-contact with Zelinsky, taking pains not to look at the grand jury members at all. I knew what was critical here was the record the stenographer was taking. That was the record that would be used should a prosecutor want to indict me for lying to the grand jury. How the grand jury voted was inconsequential to me, since I was appearing as a witness, not as a target of the grand jury investigation.
The testimony took about thirty minutes in total. I admitted to working with Stone to develop the Podesta cover-up story and I admitted Stone had asked me on October 7, 2016, to get Assange to start dropping the Podesta emails immediately, so as to compete in the news cycle with the Billy Bush exposé. The vast majority of my answers to the grand jury were one-word “yes” or “no,” in response to Zelinsky’s questions. All I had to do to get through the grand jury was to follow Zelinsky’s lead. I noted that Zelinsky had avoided altogether asking me how I knew in advance that
I was relieved to be excused from the grand jury, my testimony complete. I joined David Grey back in the small conference room for a few minutes before Zelinsky asked to speak with David privately.
When David returned to the small conference room, he gave me a “thumbs up” signal, holding his had very close to his chest so only I could see the gesture.
To my surprise, Zelinsky, Rhee, and Goldstein, followed by the FBI agents who had been present followed David into the small conference room. Each of them shook my hand and congratulated me.
Zelinsky was especially pleased.
“Not bad for an Ignatius man,” he said. In our initial conversations, getting to know one another before first day’s questioning started, Zelinsky also noted that I had graduated from St. Ignatius High School, a well-known Jesuit school in Cleveland, Ohio. Although I graduated Ignatius in 1968 and Zelinsky was much younger, I recalled he said his wife had an association with Gilmore Academy, a private, Catholic, coed school located in Gates Mills, Ohio. Even in my era, girls from Gilmore Academy frequently dated the guys from Ignatius.
Being driven back to the Mayflower from the FBI, I felt relieved. I hoped my ordeal with the Special Prosecutor was over now that my grand jury appearance was done. Despite many lapses of memory and repeated threats from the prosecutors that I had already said enough to be charged with lying to the FBI, I believed the celebratory handshakes at the end of my testimony meant all was forgiven. Why would Mueller charge me with lying to the FBI if the Special Counselor’s office planned on using my testimony to indict Roger Stone, I wondered? Clearly, undermining my credibility by charging me with perjury would be the last thing Mueller would want to do if Zelinsky, Rhee, and Goldstein felt my testimony was critical to indicting and convicting Stone.
As I evaluated my own testimony, I felt the only crime I might have committed was not objecting to Stone using my Podesta memo in his sworn testimony before the House Intel Committee. But, in reality, all I had admitted that Stone or I had committed was the “crime” of practicing politics, or more precisely the “crime” of having supported Donald Trump for the presidency against Hillary Clinton in 2016. If everyone who lied in a political campaign had been criminally prosecuted for the crime of not telling the truth, every politician and political operative would be arrested, tried, and put in prison. When it came to the House Intel Committee, witnesses are allowed to alter their testimony when inconvenient facts “prove” they had lied in their initial sworn testimony.
Why it was so important to Mueller to prove Stone had advance knowledge in August 2016 that Assange had Podesta’s emails was a mystery to me.
Under various Supreme Court rulings, I was allowed to contact Assange, to meet with him, and to interview him, even if Assange was in receipt of stolen DNC emails. As a political operative, I could not see that Stone had committed any crime by wanting to know what additional material adverse to Hillary Clinton that Assange may have had after the drop of DNC emails on July 22, 2016, just before the start of the Democrat’s nominating convention in Philadelphia.
At dinner, David Gray burst the bubble. While he felt I had done perfect in my grand jury testimony, he said Zelinsky told him the Special Counsel’s office might want to call me back to question me more about who my source to Assange was. I was devastated to think this was only round one and that I would be called back for yet another grand jury appearance.
But this time, I feared, Zelinsky, Rhee, and Goldstein would not be so forgiving.