Cooperating Witness in Mueller's Inquiry Predicts His Own Indictment for Lying

WASHINGTON – Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist and friend of the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., said on Monday that his two-month-long cooperation with the special counsel's office has broken down and he expects to be charged with lying to investigators or a federal grand jury.

Mr. Corsi, who said he has been cooperating with Robert S. Mueller III, predicted his own indictment in a live stream.

He offered no independent corroboration, and he has a long history of public lobbing grenades, including insisting that President Barack Obama was raised to a Muslim and forged his birth certificate. Mr. Corsi's lawyer, David Gray, had no comment, nor did a spokesman for Mr. Mueller, who is investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and any Trump associates were involved.

Mr. Corsi, 72, figures in the inquiry because he and Mr. Stone were apparently in touch with each other about WikiLeaks during the final months of the campaign. As part of a wide-ranging effort to undermine the election, the Russian intelligence operatives had hacked Democratic emails, including those of Hillary Clinton's chairman, John D. Podesta, and gave them to WikiLeaks to distribute.

Mr. Stone, who served briefly in Trump campaign adviser and maintained contact, was known where WikiLeaks got the stolen emails and how it was planned to use them. Mr. Stone has said that he was only boasting during the campaign when he claimed to be in touch with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, about the purloined documents.

Mr. Corsi has publicly defended Mr. Stone, insisting that he was the source of a suspicious message that Mr. Stone posted on Twitter in August 2016, predicting that it would be Mr. Podesta's "time in the barrel." Mr. Stone posted the tweet before WikiLeaks began releasing tens of thousands of Mr. Podesta's emails, throwing Mrs. Clinton's campaign on the defense only one month before Election Day.

Mr. Corsi said that Mr. Stone was relying on Mr. Podesta's involvement in an offshore company. "I am confident that I am the source behind Stone's tweet," he said in an article posted on Infowars, a site that promotes conspiracy theories.

In his YouTube video, Mr. Corsi said that he had been repeatedly analyzed by a team of three prosecutors and multiple F.B.I. agents and that he had cooperated fully. He also testified before a federal grand jury in September in Washington.

Mr. Corsi said that he had not had anything to do with it. Clinton campaign, it was only because he knew how to use the information of "connect the dots." But prosecutors confronted him with a thick binder of all his communications, he said, and after repeated interrogations, "my mind was mush."

He said that he thinks that the special counsels will be able to do so, but he believes that he has committed no crime.

"Trying to explain yourself to these people is a lost cause," he said.