I cannot fathom what Corsi thinks he’s doing. msnbc.com/the-beat-with-…
I mean, yes, hoping a public profile ups his chances of a pardon. But you don’t do Ari Melber’s show to win Trump’s favor, and there are a whole bunch of self-inflicted wounds in there as well.
Things I would ask Corsi if I had him in a chair for a 20 minute interview, in case any cable hosts feel like taking suggestions:
1. Why did you write “word is...” in your correspondence with Stone if you were merely offering your own speculation?
1. Why did you write “word is...” in your correspondence with Stone if you were merely offering your own speculation?
2. Walk me through, in detail, how you “figured out” that Podesta, as opposed to any number of other Clinton associates, would be the subject of the next hacked email dump?
3. Walk me through, in detail, your reasoning behind the prediction that a subsequent dump would contain material that could be used to cast doubt on the state of Hillary’s health.
4. Did you ask Roger Stone why he wanted you to help him fabricate an explanation for his Podesta comments? Why did you agree to help him by lying to Congress, instead of testfying that it had been your own theory?
Re: 3, none of the email dumps “focused” on HRC’s health, but there were several in the Podesta dump that Trumpy outlets seized on as evidence she was concealing serious health problems. washingtonexaminer.com/emails-aides-k… breitbart.com/politics/2016/… breitbart.com/politics/2016/…
As far as I can tell, Trump & surrogates only really started pushing a narrative about Hillary’s ill health or stamina in mid-August, a couple weeks after Corsi’s email (and a couple weeks before she actually came down with pneumonia)
Possible this is a case of self-fulfilling prophecy though: Corsi’s suggestion of damaging health revalations via Wikileaks prompted the Trump campaign to make it their focus, which in turn spurred the hunt for anything in the Podesta dump that could be construed as validation.
Seems like the August health frenzy started with this Aug 7 Drudge story keyed to a “breaking” photo of HRC being helped up stairs (which had been taken six months earlier) rare.us/rare-news/some…
Would be ironic if Corsi really was BSing when he predicted a Wikileaks drop would focus on health issues, and the campaign & friendly outlets went all in on it in expectation of some bombshell that never arrived.
Though also conceivable Corsi had a real preview of some of the material & wildly overestimated the significance of some passing references to fatigue.
Either way, it would in a weird sense almost help Trump’s case if they had really gone all-in on “HRC is ailing” based on Corsi’s Aug 2 email, insofar as you could view it as evidence they didn’t have any better advance intel about what the Podesta dump would show.
I mean, imagine believing Wikileaks really IS going to drop an October surprise about HRC having suffered a stroke, then realizing you’ve got to spin something out of a couple e-mails suggesting she wants a podium to lean on.
A good catch from @emptywheel : Aug 2, Corsi writes Stone should start suggesting HRC has had a stroke, in anticipation of the next email dump. Aug 5, Trump quips that she “took a short circuit in the brain; she’s got problems.” emptywheel.net/2018/11/27/hil…
The latter riffing on HRC’s explanation that she’d “short circuited” when she’d answered a question incorrectly, but still, oddly specific.
Last Corsi observation. In e-mail to Stone, he predicts TWO big forthcoming dumps of hacked docs. The 2nd was supposedly coming in October (which is both vague and not exactly shocking given that “October surprise” is a cliche). But the first was “shortly after I get back.”
Meaning, apparently, mid-August when Corsi was due back from Europe. That prediction is interesting in that it’s both more specific and not the obvious thing you’d say if someone asked you to pick the best time to strategically release damaging info on a candidate.
But it also appears not to have come true: Wikileaks didn’t drop any significant hacked docs from Democrats in mid-August 2016. Which makes it easier to suppose Corsi just made a lucky guess. EXCEPT “Guccifer 2.0” (the Russian hackers’ public persona) DID have a mid-August dump.
Two, actually. On August 12, via DCLeaks, there was a dump of info from a hack of the DCCC, mostly trivial memoranda and personal contact information for various Democrats, though hinted to be just a piece of a larger trove. And then on August 15 a dump on Soros foundations.
Thing is, as the invaluable @emptywheel has noted, there’s a lot of pretty solid evidence that the DCCC dump was SUPPOSED to have been Wikileaks dump. emptywheel.net/2018/04/06/wha…
Click through to Marcy’s post & the links therein, and you’ll see that Wikileaks was wrangling a bit with sources who wanted material out faster, & talked a British reporter out of running with some material she’d been offered that Wikileaks was already preparing for release.
“Guccifer 2.0” publicly claimed at the time that the rest of the DCCC material would be coming out via Wikileaks, though it never did. For reasons unclear, it never did. But it looks as though Corsi’s less-obvious prediction, a big mid-August dump of hacked docs, WASN’T wrong...
Rather, it appears that a dump via Wikileaks was planned on the timetable Corsi gave, “Guccifer 2.0” posted some of it prematurely to prod them to hurry up, and then for reasons unclear the planned release didn’t happen.
Now, Corsi has explained his prediction of an October dump as basically a clever guess based on what would make strategic sense if he were in Assange’s shoes. Fine, let’s suppose. But I haven’t seen him give any account of why he predicted exactly two dumps, one in mid-August.
The obvious reason: nobody’s asking him, because there’s no need to explain a prediction that doesn’t come true. But if he was actually right about both dumps—and the planned mid-August one ended up aborted after Guccifer jumped the gun on DCLeaks—then maybe it IS worth asking.
As Marcy notes, right after announcing that Wikileaks will publish the rest of the DCCC trove, he also tries to pitch the docs to Roger Stone (who doesn’t appear to respond via Twitter) and to another operative who expresses interest, James Bambanek . emptywheel.net/2018/04/06/wha… 
Summing up: Corsi actually seems to have been right about the *planned* timing of *both* impending Wikileaks dumps, which is harder to explain as a lucky guess. One of those dumps ended up aborted, despite Guccifer’s announcement, after he sought to peddle it to GOP operatives.
Related:It sure seems like we ought to revisit Roger Stone’s supposedly exhaustive record of his communication with Guccifer 2.0 in light of what we now know about his e-mails with Corsi. stonecoldtruth.com/roger-stone-th…
We now know that Stone was extremely interested in Guccifer’s hacked documents, and actively solicited Corsi to seek out advance copies of the files from Assange—first requesting he do so by e-mail, then following up to request they talk by phone.
So fast forward to mid August. “Guccifer 2.0” previews part of a second hacked document dump & says the rest is forthcoming via Wikileaks, right around when Corsi predicted. Two days later, Stone reaches out to “Guccifer 2.0” via Twitter DM.
In response, “Guccifer” basically gushes at Stone and all but begs to help any way he can. And on Stone’s version of events, he totally blows the guy off. The hacked documents Stone was making so much effort to obtain from Wikileaks a few weeks earlier? Not even curious
Suddenly Stone displays no interest whatever in the files he’d been so eager to get from Wikileaks. Proprietary Dem turnout models—implicitly just a fraction of a trove—are dangled in front of him, and his only response is a blasé “pretty standard.” No further contact.
But for reasons never explained, the rest of that planned dump never does show up on Wikileaks.
Well, to quote the movie Clue: Maybe that’s how it happened. Maybe Stone perfunctorily blew off an offer of material he’d been awfully eager to get a few weeks earlier, never asking so much as a follow up question.
And maybe the announced Wikileaks dump of the rest of the hacked DCCC files never happened because everyone involved decided they were boring, and they just rotted on a hard drive somewhere. That’s one possibility.
But that version requires a bunch of people’s goals and motivations to radically change very suddenly for no discernible reason. So maybe we can tell a more parsimonious story.
Twitter DM is, to put it mildly, not a secure communications channel. Messages are unencrypted. Guccifer 2.0 was openly bragging about felonies on the public Twitter account from which he’d messaged Stone on. Even an idiot would assume law enforcement was reading those messages.
If Guccifer offered you help via DM, then even if your previously expressed interest in his files remained undiminished, you’d have to be a fool to say so via that channel. Or to show any enthusiasm for further communications, really.
Rather, you’d just look for a way to reestablish contact on a secure channel. Imagine you succeed. What might be a plausible way for that conversation to play out?
Specifically with respect to the DCCC cache, you might note that there’s no real value to you in their publication. You can’t spin a spreadsheet into an attack ad or a bad news cycle for your opponent.
To the extent such data is useful at all, it’s probably most useful when you or your allies have a copy, and your adversaries don’t know you have it. Or at least, don’t know exactly what you have.
You might, therefore, point out that it would be more helpful if the data were provided to you directly, assuming you’re the sort of person who’s inclined to seek out data hacked from your opponents, and not released publicly at all.
That is another way things could have gone. It is somewhat more economical than the first version, insofar as it does not require anyone to suddenly become uninterested in things they’d previously been very interested in.
It also provides one possible explanation of why various parties apparently preparing to publish a large cache of hacked documents might abruptly abandon that announced publication without giving any public account of what happened.
Obviously, this is just one hypothetical that accommodates some otherwise odd facts. But if I were Bob Mueller, I’d be looking into whether “pretty standard” was really the end of that exchange, and I’d be trying to figure out what became of the rest of those DCCC files.
Another possibility, since it never pays to get prematurely enamored of one’s hypotheticals, is that Stone’s interest in the files was outweighed by his fear of direct involvement—he asked Corsi to make inquiries on his behalf, after all, when he could have done so himself.
A guy whose approach to seeking the files was: ask Corsi to ask Malloch to ask Assange could well have been spooked by such a direct overture from an avowed hacker using his public Twitter.
That would also account for the sudden lack of interest in pursuing the files, though it would still leave the puzzle of why the mid-August dump was aborted.
