An associate of Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, confirmed Friday that he is in plea talks with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to multiple reports.
Jerome Corsi told The Associated Press he is negotiating a potential plea deal, although he declined to elaborate.
In a video posted last week on YouTube, he said he expected he would be indicted for giving false information to investigators, The Hill reported.
“I’m going to be criminally charged,” he said.
Corsi provided Trump campaign officials, including Stone, with research on Democrats during the 2016 race for the White House, according The Washington Post. The newspaper was the first to report on the possible plea deal.
Mueller’s team has been investigating connections between Stone and WikiLeaks in light of a warning shared by Stone in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Stone said in a tweet on Aug. 21, 2016, that “it will soon (be) Podesta’s time in the barrel.” On Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails that had been stolen from John Podesta, the chairman of Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Intelligence officials later determined the emails were among items stolen by Russian hackers.
Corsi said he cooperated for about two months with Mueller's team and gave investigators a pair of computers and access to his cellphone, emails and Twitter account, The Hill reported. However, he said talks had recently "blown up," according to the AP.
Stone, who has also said he is prepared to be indicted, has denied having any ties to WikiLeaks.
"I had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures," Stone told the AP earlier this month.
In a statement released to the AP on Friday, Stone said Corsi appears to be under "a tremendous amount of pressure, and it is beginning to affect him profoundly."
“He has stated publicly that he is being asked over and over to say things he simply does not believe occurred,” Stone said.
Officials continue to investigate.
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