Stone and Corsi and Alex Jones

I'm back. I think. A serious computer issue forced an absence, although I was tempted to make that absence permanent. How can one write about politics when the sight of this "president" makes one retch?

But here I am. I can't resist shouting HUZZAH at the news that it is now Roger Stone's time in the barrel. Finally.

The indictment's wording does not say who on the campaign knew about Stone's quest, but makes clear it was multiple people. This is the first time prosecutors have alleged they know of additional people close to the President who worked with Stone as he sought out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1," prosecutors wrote.

Here is the actual indictment.

There is much to be said about all this. Right now, I'm interested in the Jerome Corsi connection. Corsi is also in serious trouble, and it couldn't happen to a nicer conspira-freak. Bottom line: Despite Corsi's public insistence that will go to jail rather than say anything against Trump, Stone and Corsi have fallen out in a huge way. It seems pretty clear from the personal nature of the attacks that Stone thinks that Corsi has ratted him out.

Here is one of Stone's Instagram attacks on Corsi. It reveals more than you might think.

The argument over precisely when Corsi was canned means little to me, although clearly it means much to Roger Stone. Many of us will be amused to learn that Infowars has a Human Resources Director. Beyond that, let us note two things:

1. According to Talking Points Memo, Corsi received $15,000 a month from Infowars, even when he was doing nothing. That's an income of $180k a year. Not bad.

2. The original version of the document includes Corsi's street address, which I've decided to redact. Stone's decision to publish the address may have been the secret point of this attack. There has been a lot of talk, in recent days, of witness intimidation.

I don't want to be party to that. Still...don't you want to look at Mr. Corsi's neighborhood?

Thanks to Google, we can see Corsi's house:

"Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." Okay, it isn't that nice, but this house definitely doesn't look like a conspiracy theorist's pad.

I got to know quite a few conspiracy writers back in the '90s, when I was a reckless seeker of adventure unafraid to travel in low circles. Pretty much everyone in that subculture was ill-to-do; some were impoverished couch-surfers. Those who dwell within this demimonde tend to be penurious.

But that's not the case if you become a professional paranoia-peddler in service to the right people.
 
Did Corsi make his pile before he became a professional paranoia peddler? This section of his Wikipedia bio is of no small interest...

Corsi began to work in banking and finance in 1981.[17] In 1995 he helped launch a mutual fund to invest in formerly Communist Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union, which eventually lost $1.2 million, much of it from a group of about 20 Minnesota investors.[18][19] Some of the investors blamed the organizers, including Corsi, for their investment in the former Communist country. Two investors sued Corsi and his partners, claiming that the organizers had given their personal guarantee backing up the investment, and won judgments against them.[18] They did not collect from Corsi, because, as one investor claimed, the money "had been moved into his wife's name ... There was nothing to get out of him".[18] The FBI found no basis for bringing criminal charges.[18] Until his 2004 book, Corsi was a financial services marketing specialist.

In 2017, Corsi was hired as the Infowars "Washington Bureau Chief," even though he lives in New Jersey. As we have seen, he continued to be paid even after his services were no longer required. Understand: For a lot less than $15,000 a month, AJ could have hired someone in DC who was able and willing to do ten times the amount of fear-peddling. Hell, I bet that you could buy a ton of fear for as little as $2K a month.

Am I being paranoid if I suggest that Alex Jones' operation is being used to pay off members of Team Trump?

Let's go further. Was Corsi lying his capacious ass off when he made those loud public declarations that he will never work with Mueller? Did Roger Stone know that Corsi was lying? Did Corsi lie because he fears Team Trump?

The more I look at recent events -- in this country and elsewhere (especially Russia) -- it seems likely that witness intimidation has become a far greater factor than most would have predicted. I believe that, behind the scenes, people have made and received threats of physical violence.

That's one way to interpret the fact that Roger Stone went out of the way to publish Jerome Corsi's address.