Hillary Clinton Caught Her Stroke from Jerome Corsi
Gotta give Jerome Corsi: For a guy that not even his spouse should believe, he has taken down a series of Democratic presidential candidates. One thing we learn from the plea agreement he didn’t sign, for example, is that a campaign attack claiming that Hillary had had a stroke may have originated with the same guy who invented the Swift Boat Veterans and a Kenyan birth certificate.
On August 2, 2016, having consulted with someone who consulted with Julian Assange, Corsi advised Roger Stone to start setting up a claim that Hillary had had a stroke.
On or about August 2, 2016, CORSI responded to Person 1 by email. CORSI wrote that he was currently in Europe and planned to return in mid-August. CORSI stated: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging…. Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke — neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.” [my emphasis]
On August 3, by his own accounting, Roger Stone spoke with Trump.
On August 5, Trump started an attack on Hillary that would evolve into claims she had a stroke.
Donald Trump pumped up his attacks on Hillary Clinton’s character Saturday night by suggesting that the former secretary of state is not mentally fit to be president.
“She took a short-circuit in the brain. She’s got problems,” Trump said, seizing on Clinton’s explanation that she “short-circuited” a recent answer about her truthfulness in discussing her email server.
“Honestly, I don’t think she’s all there,” he added.
A perhaps more interesting detail is that when Corsi tried to destroy all evidence he had been conspiring with people working with emails stolen by Russia, he deleted all those before October 11.
Between approximately January 13, 2017 and March 1, 2017, CORSI deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016, including Person 1’s email instructing CORSI to “get to [the founder of Organization 1]” and CORSI’s subsequent forwarding of that email to the overseas individual.
October 11 is the day WikiLeaks released the emails including attachments relating to Joule were released. If you wanted to eliminate all evidence of foreknowledge of those emails, you’d start there. And Corsi tried to do just that, eliminate evidence of the period leading up to WikiLeaks’ release of Joule emails, during a period when Stone was working on a cover-up story.
Overseas person = Farage. Fits Simpson’s testimony to Congress?
Ted Malloch I think?
Thank you, I’d forgotten about him. Although, like Farage, he denies having been in the embassy to fit this date. Also wonder about what information Cottrell traded for his plea deal.
Farage having criminal liability would be amazing. He comes to US in mid-December, love for him to be scooped at the airport
I’m sure most of us would send him gift-wrapped if we could. Fear we may have to wait til, say, end of May next year to see anything like that.
The month, or the PM? /s
Also, has anyone here seen reporting that Corsi faked those draft documents? On a comments board elsewhere, a reader mentioned that the docket number and electronic signature seem dodgy.
“[E]nd of May next year” — that reminds me that the end of Theresa May might come this year, if there is a no confidence vote on her, particularly if it is associated with the approval of the Brexit agreement next month.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/16/rebel-tory-mps-press-for-vote-of-no-confidence-in-theresa-may
Now, I wonder if that might speed things up with Farage coming to the U.S. about the same time.
“Book him, Bobb-o”
I am so confused. None of Corsi’s moves make any sense, unless he is just trying to get a pardon? Why release emails that contradict what you have been saying, and seem incriminating?
Interesting post on what grounds Assange should or should not be prosecuted. “Just Security” blog says that case law protects journos who publish stolen documents that are factual, but may not protect them if they knowingly work with a foreign intelligence service. What I was thinking a week ago when we were discussing this. Writer makes case that whistleblowers usually act out of sincere belief (accurate or not) that they are acting to promote public interest, where hostile intelligence service may not be. https://www.justsecurity.org/61519/prosecuting-wikileaks-protecting-press-freedoms-drawing-line-knowing-collaboration-foreign-intelligence-agency/
Do we know how Mueller got the email if Corsi deleted it on his end?
You would think these dolts would realize Mueller probably has about a thousand hard drives worth of data from all different sources at this point, and yet they still act like they can finesse and bluff their way through. It’s true he won’t have everything on everyone, but do they really think it makes sense to act like they’re being interviewed by Devin Nunes’s staff?
I think FBI restored it from his computer. But their guesstimate for when he deleted the emails suggests they may have asked his provider to preserve them.
Didn’t he recover some stuff himself, from Apple Time Machine? I don’t remember whether he had an external harddrive or if he stored it on the cloud, etc. (Or maybe I just made that up).
Thing about emails that are sent, there’s always more than one copy.
This is so true. There’s the original, the recipient’s/s’, the incremental backups, the full backups, the mirror copies on redundant systems…
I don’t understand what Corsi is trying to say here:
Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about.
Who’s the enemy here? And “drop Hillary”? Who’s “they” for that matter. Is he suggesting the DNC was somehow going to be influenced to replace Hillary with another candidate? I vaguely remember that idea floating around before the 2016 election, but was Corsi actively pushing that? Kinda odd.
Yeah he stated he thought she would be so toxic Dems would dump her.
Who is he referring to as the hackers?
If you look at Stone’s tweetering around late July / early August 2016, he using the DNC hack to claim Bernie had been cheated out of the nomination, and he was also big on the Clinton Cash / Foundation stuff. On August 6th he was gobbing on Breitbart about how blaming “the Russians” was a sideshow because the hacker was … his pal Guccifer 2.0.
Corsi is saying that Stone and Trump should work to stoke the battle between the HillBots and BernieBros. “Hillary in bed with the enemy” sounds much like some of the Bro-est of the Bros, where the enemy in question was Wall Street.
from all i witnessed, the bro-est of the bernie bros were largely sockpuppet trolls, russian and otherwise
What Rat-Fookery! While it shouldn’t be, it’s still astounding to me how a bunch of self-serving, incompetent trolls installed the clearly unqualified Trump in the White House and have gotten away with it as long as they have. And I’m still not convinced that there weren’t software interventions on 11-8-2016 in select districts by Vlad’s GRU Impalers. A pox on Corsi, Stone, Trump, etc.
The Russians infiltrated congress through the NRA to throw money and influence at candidates who would tow the line. Trump already had a nice cushy landing waiting for him to guarantee he’d last this long.
Say what you want about Louise mensche, but at least she isn’t anonymous
What does that mean, Willis?
it’s a “fuck you” to someone who is a coward
I don’t know who you are alluding to, but I’ll have to wait and find out. I’m guessing this might be the emptywheel reveal down the road.
It’s really not important
Yeah, I was just curious, that’s all.
More signalling. They love keeping each other in the loop.
To the point of hurting themselves. It is all rather amazing, no?
I assume, Marcy, you will at some point soon address the NYTimes story that just went up in which Giuliani goes on record saying that Manafort’s lawyer was feeding them information — it seems like a desperate attempt to get out ahead of what’s coming and just unashamedly assert “so what? what the fuck are you going to do about it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/politics/manafort-lawyer-trump-cooperation.html
The article says that there is nothing illegal about such information sharing, even if it’s highly unusual, though the details are fuzzy whether Manafort was still in a JDA with Trump even after flipping. But it’s unclear whether Maggie and Mike are simply repeating uncritically what Giuliani and Trump’s lawyers are saying about the propriety of such sharing, or whether they sought some independent verification of that assertion. Most of the other commentary I’ve seen has noted that a lawyer who acted in that manner would be risking disbarment, not to mention the obstruction of justice stuff.
You gotta hand it to Giuliani though for his brazenness.
I think Rudy’s latest illustrates two traits he and Trump share: Assert dominance and feign leadership by appearing to get out ahead of the news. Be open and notorious about wrongful conduct. That stakes a claim with the gullible that it’s admirable or not wrongful. Witness your last line. More practically, the self-reveal lowers the impact of the news in venues that count, such as in court or when a committee is about to vote.
The behavior amounts to an involuntary belch that means, “You’re goddamned right I did!”
Hard to believe Corsi would do this to protect Stone, although this move was a little shrewder than Manafort’s in that he didn’t increase his personal exposure as much. Putin really does seem to have a good chunk of right wing media/apparatchiks on his string, and he’s a lot scarier than Trump. Trump’s team already knew this, I think. Not all the JDA lawyers are idiots.
Poor Corsi. A serious attack of mens rea.
One of Rude-E’s old workmates says he shouda known better.
Conversation
Mary Shannon Little
Mary Shannon Little
@realmarylittle
When I was a prosecutor working for Rudy Giuliani, if a defense lawyer representing a cooperating witness continued to participate in a joint defense agreement, he would have investigated that lawyer and others in the joint defense for obstruction of justice.
Some lawyers are just scum buckets eh!
Is it not perhaps possible that Mueller & Co. are also investigating some lawyers in that JDA?
Stanley Cohen mentioned the possibility of the crime fraud exception and obstruction, with the lawyer losing attorney/client privilege. bmaz said it’s a possibility (based on whatever Mueller has). Joyce Vance made an excellent point: if you’ve already made a plea of guilt, and signed on to cooperate, you no longer need a defense of charges (because they are settled, save for the sentencing-paraphrased).
The only reason for someone to do this is to give cover for the others under investigation by feeding info. IANAL, but that does sound like outright obstruction to me, (and I’d think another conspiracy).
For us non-lawyers, it does seem pretty clear: if Manafort and Trump told the same lies, then Giuliani clearly admitted that those two and the lawyers involved are all part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice. That is pretty damned brazen but maybe there are some technicalities that mitigate that obvious conclusion.
Great to see Marcy on “All In” tonight. At this point, this whole cabal (Corsi, Stone, Manafort, Papa, et al) has exceeded parody. Glad Marcy, bmaz, and all can help me understand the convolutions – I keep having to remind myself this is not a Coen movie. But it’s getting harder and harder to convince myself…
Right wing grifter culture is something to behold. Most of these guys just want the rubles and suckerbucks to keep flowing, but Manafort is desperately trying to live a polonium-free existence (not to mention save his family.) This reveal is aimed outside of those in the JDA circle.
This:
“Manafort is desperately trying to live a polonium-free existence (not to mention save his family.)”
Such great reading here today. I felt inspired to contribute some disjointed ramblings.
Trump’s economic stories (lies) are falling apart as the threads of the conspiracy are being revealed publicly. He is going to be shocked as his “base” quietly fades away. Most won’t admit their mistake or apologize for following him, and most won’t have to. The soldiers will just quietly lower their swords and go home, realizing that they followed a false god. Many are already distancing themselves. Horribly, a few outliers may perpetrate further acts of violence.
In the end, the Trump family will be all alone, and they’ll lose (almost) everything. Fred taught Don to be “tough,” but it seems he learned nothing else. Don thinks anything that isn’t toughness–honesty, integrity, compassion–is weakness. Don got it wrong.
Someone seems to have tried to instill some morals in Don’s kids, but he forced them to unlearn them. See Ivanka in Jamie Johnson’s “Born Rich,” an interesting perspective in which she presents at least a bit of self-awareness, compared to some of the other families’ kids. Imagine how Eric felt when Don kicked his friends off of the charity board and instilled cronies so that he could embezzle the money from the kids with cancer. Eric lost some friends to maintain his relationship with his father. Of course, Don Jr., the namesake, is all-in and all-lost. Tiffany and Baron will survive (I pray). We the people should provide counseling, if needed. They’ve been abused if they’ve been excessively exposed to the same ideas that destroyed their half-siblings.
Unlike many, I feel sympathy for Ivan(k)a, Don Jr., and Eric. They’re adults now, and they should be held responsible for their crimes, but I see how they were corrupted, and I feel compassion. Let the facts come out, but I don’t think they’ll understand what they’ve done wrong unless they see jail time. Maybe not even then. Understanding what they did wrong is their only chance at redemption, whether or not we believe in a god. If they come out injured but still rich, they’ll just be bitter for the rest of their days.
All that said, I take pride in the fact that the same country that produced Donald Trump produced Bob Mueller and his team. Mueller suffers repeated personal attacks on his integrity by the President of the United States. He doesn’t complain. He just keeps doing his job. Because there’s still something here worth fighting for.
I’m also proud of Emptywheel. Yeoman’s work. And the rest of the fourth estate. It’s imperfect, but it is enough to help us through this. A weaker system and society would not have survived such atrocious leadership. We are demonstrating that we could put Elmer Fudd in the White House and survive. In fact, we’ll come out stronger once we repair the damage. We’ll see more voter engagement, less gerrymandering, rebalancing of executive power, and a renewed commitment to crafting real solutions to the complex problems we face (I hope and believe).
Trump is a cynic. He believes that everyone is out only for themselves. He doesn’t understand. Most people may be out mostly for themselves, but the little bit of what’s left is out for something more. Something that might fill the hole inside that he doesn’t know how to fill. The only way to fill that hole is to do something for someone other than yourself–maybe for your family or your country or your world. It seems too late for Trump to learn that. As horrible as he is, I feel a little bit of sympathy for him too.
“Ramble on Garth!”
Although I have less sympathy, and more schadenfreude, you make great points.
It’s nice to see compassion even if given to the worst. If you take it to its logical conclusion, Donald Trump himself was abused, neglected, given the short end of a DNA string, or perhaps a combination of all three. But his thrilling in cruelty and sadism, for its own sake, and the reach/power he has to inflict such harm, tempers my empathy.
One last note: I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the youngest, unless there is some outside influence. Melania’s, (like Donald’s) sympathy begins and ends with themselves. Her narcissistic campaign against bullying, as one example, where she claims to be the most bullied person in the world. Neither are good examples, IMO.
This also isn’t just about tipping off people like Assange that you can’t talk to anymore, this equally is about continually lowering the ethical bar to a new, Trumpian level – Rudy, Stone and Corsi are all all in on this strategy, so even if it’s all true it’s no longer a big deal. Make America Grift Again – we are living the PT Barnum presidency, minus the honesty.
@Sand
“A weaker system and society would not have survived such atrocious leadership. ”
I appreciate your optimism but we have not yet survived.
Trump is still President* Pence is still Vice-President*
We still have Republican majorities of both houses of Congress (until the next is seated) and Rapey McFuckface is still the second stolen SCOTUS appointment.
I certainly hope we will survive this catastrophe but feel certain that more twists and turns await and the future is always uncertain.
Agreed. And after Trump and Pence we’ll likely still have McConnell, Cruz, and others that gave up any morals they might have had to, for example, confirm a man who they knew or should have known (must have known) had just lied to them under oath while smiling the duper’s delight. These fools may destroy us yet.
I have a faint hope that Kav recuses himself from decisions involving the man that appointed him. Let Trump be on the wrong end of his transactional morality. Kav doesn’t need him anymore. Neither do the people that told Trump who Kav was in the first place. Sympathy aside, I would want to be a fly on the wall to see Trump hear that Kav has recused. My movie has a scene where the Francisco character tells him, “Mr. President, Kavanaugh has recused,” and Trump, bright red says, “Recused! Do something you idiots!” Then a man walks in and whispers in Francisco’s ear. “What!?” says Trump, and Francisco says, “Sir . . . Sir, I . . . It’s Gorsuch. He’s recused too.” Trump let’s out a scream that gets louder and louder. The camera pans out to the earth, then pans in on Putin in his office in Moscow. Putin here’s the scream faintly, then calmly reaches across his desk and picks up a folder that says “2020 Strategy and Options.” Fade to black.
HAHAHAHA Corsi and his dates. I have been completely befuddled as to why, when he wrote up the Joule attack, he had all those vagarious access dates in his refs cited *just* for you to lock down with other timelines. It’s usually custom- or so I thought- to do that as ‘Last Accessed’ and rather uniformly as close to a release or publishing date as possible. But when in Rome…
Maybe the unselfconscious working habits of a man who has never been caught, never expected to be caught up. Theory of mind, JC.
The whole thing is child-like, in a few ways. “No, I didn’t eat the cookie” with a crumby face is one way that comes strongly to mind.
Error: I attributed GAI’s past history with dates (cited in this post) to Corsi here. I tend to think of these people as continuous variables, like their projects. I don’t think any of this diminishes Corsi’s (and Stone’s, for that matter) lack of datesmithery, so while I did regret-ish the unkind HAHAHAHA, it still stands.
Who speaks for the Ostrich –
An oldie but a goodie:
Manafort received money that may have come from ” the most dangerous mobster in the world”.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-reveals-new-manafort-link-to-organized-crime
RIP Harry Leslie Smith, Englishman, Canadian, progressive commentator, veteran of the Second World War, age 95:
Thanks for this quote & link, Earl. What a wonderful writer – great perspective. Reminds me of my dad re impoverished youth, 8th AF war years and post war experience. Yes, decency, fair play and the meritocracy are finished under the 1%. I’m glad my dad isn’t here to see it, though.
Thank you EofH, I am gunna look this Harry Leslie Smith up (may he rest in peace). My WWII veteran father felt the same when he died in 2002.
Hey Marcy, it was good seeing you on All In with Chris Hayes. His show is one of the best on MSNBC. Initially, people seemed averse to your hypothesis, but I noticed how that is changing by the hour. (Especially with the NYT revelation and Rudy confession).
More exposure about All the President’s Criminal Men.
“Dear criminals you may not get caught today but you will get caught, you may not pay for your crimes today but you will pay.” Dlaveaux
Can we get a link to the Chris Hayes segment with Ms. Wheeler?
I’ll admit that my head is spinning after everything yesterday. Here’s what I’m seeing.
1. One of Manafort’s lawyers was briefing Team Trump on the questions Mueller was asking Manafort after he’d gotten his plea deal. At a minimum, it seems that Mueller’s team was aware that this was a possibility and could have been tailoring their questions appropriately.
2. Manafort’s been busted for lying to Mueller’s team. We haven’t seen the proof yet, but Mueller’s team doesn’t seem to bluff, so they’ve probably got him dead to rights.
3. Jerome Corsi’s previous statements appear to have been refuted by Jerome Corsi’s book, in which he says he and Stone concocted a cover story for how Stone knew about the Wikileaks document dumps. Stone needed a cover story because he’d lied to Congress about this. Corsi appears to have known that he was creating a story to cover for perjury.
4. Stone denies working with Corsi to concoct a cover story.
5. The Guardian says that Manafort met with Julian Assange in 2016. Team Manafort says that the two have never met at all. Many people are skeptical about this and think that The Guardian might have gotten played. The Guardian’s article is still up with no retraction, so even though other media outlets haven’t been able to confirm it, it doesn’t look like anyone’s been able to refute it, either. British intelligence almost certainly knows the comings and goings of everyone into or out of the Ecuadorian embassy. Mueller almost certainly knows if the story is true, too. The rest of us are still waiting to see how this one plays out.
 Ross GarberVerified account @rossgarber
https://twitter.com/rossgarber/status/1067786441252630528
bmaz, does this look right to you? He is citing law as it pertains to corporations (and people within that corporation).
That looks like a policy, so variations permitted.
The illustration given for applying this policy – the commonality between a corporate entity and its employees – seems distinguishable the relationship between Manafort and various other potential individual defendants.
The illustration would better fit the relationship between Trump, his family, and their so-called family foundation or any legal entities established for his campaign.
Is it possible that we are getting near the beginning of the end of one of the biggest national and international clusterfucks ever? We sure could use a break before beginning to repair the damage, but there is no break. And I fear that fascism is getting stronger abroad. Good night David. Good night Chet.
Buckle up. The 2020 replacement ride hasn’t started. Nor has Mueller’s public show begun. Trump will pull the craziest stuff out of his ass this country has ever seen.
Hey gang — I need your eyeballs and your phones. Thanks!
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/28/grab-your-phone-and-dial-now-no-on-farr/
Man, what days. Two minor points to add, I’m going with the conservative directive of “assume personal responsibility” on the 3 Ivana Trump kids. Other people’s kids have been sent to prison for much less while living much worse lives, materially speaking.
And, do Stone and Corsi have any legal exposure in state courts if bailed out of this mess by Trump?
Something that still disturbs me
Whenever the “damaging emails released by wikileaks” are referenced, it is seldom even mentioned that Wikileaks cobbled together out of context and even irrelevant emails and wrote a biased and often false narrative to “explain” what they “meant.”
Wikileaks 2016 products mirror false allegations made by Republicans previously, concurrently and subsequently.
In effect, Wikileaks facilitated the conspiracy between the Russian intelligence services and the Trump campaign.
A fruitful inquiry might be one that seeks to reveal whether Russian intelligence and Wikileaks had help curating the stolen emails to “weaponize” them into plausible-sounding smears.
I’ve read the Wikileaks curations and found that, in some instances, right wing talking points that were being discussed by Clinton’s campaign were represented as the views of the people commenting on them!
That is just ONE of the dishonest tactics used. I think this is important because an expose of these propaganda tactics strips Wikileaks of its pretense at journalism.
Misleading and false propaganda is not “in the public interest,” and it should not be protected speech. If the emails actually revealed malfeasance or crimes, then one could argue that publishing them is protected.
Falsely accusing people of crimes is itself a crime. Stealing their personal papers to facilitate such accusations are crimes to further crimes.
The entire Wikileaks curation of the stolen emails portrays a kind of sadistic hatred of journalism and free speech.
Abusively masquerading as a whistleblower in order to smear people and falsely accuse them of crimes is not the exercise of rights, it’s an attack on both the victim and journalism itself.