Meet Jerome Corsi, the conspiracy theorist turned conspirator

Robert Mueller is zeroing in on the ties between Corsi, Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, and Mother Russia

jerome corsi
WASHINGTON – OCTOBER 14: Aryo Pirouznia, coordinator of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), speaks during a news conference at the National Press Club October 14, 2004 in Washington, DC. Pirouznia said Hassan Nemazee, who has raised money for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, filed a $10 million lawsuit in a Texas court charging the SMCCDI and Pirouznia with libeling him by suggesting he is a supporter of the Islamist regime in Iran. Pirouznia claims that the lawsuit s frivolous and has filed a counter suit. With him are his attorney Bob Jenevein (C) and author Jerome Corsi. (Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images)

There is a point where one can go from being a conspiracy theorist to becoming an actual conspirator. It seems that Jerome Corsi, who is reportedly negotiating a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, may have reached that point during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller is zeroing in on the ties between Corsi, Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, and, of course, Mother Russia.

Corsi has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy thinking for some years. He has been part of numerous campaigns to vilify leading Democrats, a veteran, so to speak, of the Swift Boat Veterans…

There is a point where one can go from being a conspiracy theorist to becoming an actual conspirator. It seems that Jerome Corsi, who is reportedly negotiating a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, may have reached that point during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller is zeroing in on the ties between Corsi, Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, and, of course, Mother Russia.

Corsi has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy thinking for some years. He has been part of numerous campaigns to vilify leading Democrats, a veteran, so to speak, of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s mission to take down John Kerry in 2004 and the birther contretemps about Barack Obama, which Donald Trump, among others, helped to push.

Now, as Martin Longman of the Washington Monthly observes, it may be Corsi’s time in the barrel, one of the many evocative phrases that the Trump candidacy has bequeathed to us. Corsi says that being questioned for some 40 hours by the Mueller team was tantamount to being interrogated by the Gestapo and that it turned his brain to ‘mush’, but there is scant evidence that this was not its original state.

Whether any of this impinges upon Trump directly remains an open question. The most suggestive evidence that it does derived from Trump’s own frantic efforts to impede the Mueller inquiry. Trump was surely thinking of Corsi’s plight when he tweeted on November 15 that Mueller and his team ‘have gone absolutely nuts’—a case of projection if there ever was one.

His best line of defense would probably be that Corsi’s kookiness precluded him from helping to execute a grand plot to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. But even if Corsi isn’t all that swift in the end, his compatriot Stone, a master of the political dark arts, may find that Mueller’s determination to leave no stone unturned forces him to plead for a deal as well. Maybe he can ask his old Russian friend Guccifer 2.0 for help, if he can find him.

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