What Stone May Have Known

According to NBC News, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators have evidence conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi knew in advance that Russia gave WikiLeaks hacked Clinton emails and Corsi told longtime Trump political advisor Roger Stone.

Mueller's investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails.

The source and other people familiar with the matter say they have seen no evidence suggesting either man played any role in the hacking or release of the emails. Stone adamantly denies doing anything but passing on information already in the public domain.

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Mueller has summoned Corsi and nearly a dozen other of Stone's associates to testify before his Washington, D.C. grand jury, people familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

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"I was questioned vigorously for hours," said a former Stone associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He told NBC News that Mueller's investigators put enormous pressure on him to recall specific details from the 2016 campaign. "They think they're on to something."

In July, Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with conspiracy to violate U.S. election laws by hacking Democratic emails and releasing them through fake online personas, and later, WikiLeaks. If an American were found to have knowingly aided that effort, he or she could be charged as a member of that conspiracy, legal experts have said.

Corsi founded the birther movement that Donald Trump embraced, perpetuating the lie that President Obama was not born in the United States.

In 2017, Corsi became the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for InfoWars, a web site run by Alex Jones, whose inflammatory lies about the 2014 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have gotten him banned from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Corsi no longer works there.

Mueller subpoenaed Corsi in September, and he turned over computer, phone and email records, the source said. Mueller's investigators have spent weeks interviewing many of his contacts, asking them what he said about WikiLeaks, the source said.

Questioned by Mueller's prosecutors about why he appeared to know before anyone else that WikiLeaks had Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's emails, Corsi told them he simply figured it out on his own, the source said ...

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Stone denied that Corsi ever told him before it became public that Podesta's emails had been obtained by WikiLeaks, and he denies involvement with Russia, telling NBC News it's a "left-wing conspiracy theory." But he also says he expects to be indicted, and a lawyer close to the case told NBC News he thought that was likely as well.

Stone has a recent history of changing his story about his interactions with Russians.

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Some lawyers close to the case believe Mueller would not take so much of the grand jury's time with witness testimony unless he had good reason to believe it would lead to an indictment. But others believe Mueller is using the grand jury to gather facts that he will lay out in a massive report to the Justice Department laying out the fruits of his inquiry.