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Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Back issues
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Embattled Conspiracy Theorist Drags Bezos Into Mueller Suit

Amending his claims against Special Counsel Robert Mueller, conservative author Jerome Corsi told a federal judge Monday he is the target of a conspiracy involving Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and a reporter for the Washington Post.

WASHINGTON (CN) – Amending his claims against Special Counsel Robert Mueller, conservative author Jerome Corsi told a federal judge Monday he is the target of a conspiracy involving Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and a reporter for the Washington Post.

The new complaint follows new allegations about the Trump Organization’s real estate negotiations in Russia at the height of the presidential election.

Though onetime Trump attorney Michael Cohen would later tell Congress that the plan for Trump skyscrapers in Moscow was abandoned in January 2016, in truth the negotiations extended through June 2016 — the month before Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination. 

President Donald Trump has denied that he directed Cohen to lie to Congress, but Corsi says the new allegations suggest that the Special Counsel’s Office is leaking highly sensitive information to the media about grand jury proceedings.

Represented by attorney Larry Klayman, Corsi scoffed at Mueller’s denial of the reports, saying the special counsel is “try[ing to cover his illegal tracks and head off a department investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General.”

The 23-page filing also accuses Washington Post owner Bezos and Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia of acting in concert as recently as Jan. 17 to interfere with Corsi’s business relationships with InfoWars and InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

InfoWars hired Corsi in January 2017 to establish a Washington news bureau, but Corsi was later fired after he failed to maintain White House Press credentials.

Corsi alleges that Franzia “grilled him” in a telephone interview on Jan. 17 and told him that the Post obtained sensitive information from “unspecific sources in the Office of the Special Counsel,” indicating Mueller was investigating monthly payments Corsi may have received in exchange for staying silent regarding “incriminating evidence” found on Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone and InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

“These hush money payments [of $15,000 per month] to plaintiff Corsi were maliciously and falsely represented to be made by Dr. David Jones, father of Alex Jones of InfoWars,” the complaint says of Corsi’s exchange with Franzia.

Franzia also said his “unidentified special counsel source” informed him the payments had suddenly dried up.

For defamation and ongoing illegal surveillance, Corsi is seeking $1.6 billion in punitive damages.

“The actions of defendant Jeff Bezos, the ultra-leftist and vehemently anti-Trump owner and publisher of WAPO, whose net worth is reported to be about $170 billion dollars, and at his direction his pliant reporter defendant Manuel Roig-Franzia, were also intended and did tortuously interfere, with and destroy the business relationships of plaintiff Corsi with Dr. David Jones, Alex Jones and InfoWars, thereby severely damaging Dr. Corsi,” the complaint states.

A representative from InfoWars did not immediately respond to request for comment Tuesday.

Stone, an InfoWars contributor, appeared to strike back at Corsi, however, in a post Monday to Instagram.

“Tragically, Dr. Jerry Corsi has lied about me for Robert Mueller’s grand jury,” Stone said in a video post.

Corsi is a longtime conspiracy theorist, and his Jan. 21 complaint amendments are the latest in a long string of similar charges the 72-year-old has brought in recent months against Mueller and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

During a months-long investigation by the Special Counsel’s Office, Corsi is suspected of having having lied to prosecutors on Sept. 6, 2018, about whether Stone asked him in 2016 to contact WikiLeaks about the release of emails that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The allegations were first revealed in draft court documents, including a statement of offense, distributed among multiple news outlets last year.

Corsi, who questioned President Barack Obama’s American citizenship in the book “Where’s the Birth Certificate,” has regularly denied knowledge of the email dump or interaction with WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange.

Washington Post reporter Franzia has not returned an email seeking comment.

Categories / Civil Rights, Government, Politics

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