Mueller’s team has spent months investigating whether the conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, learned before the public did that WikiLeaks had obtained emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers — and whether he passed information about the stolen emails to Donald Trump associate Roger Stone, multiple sources said…

Questioned by Mueller’s prosecutors about why he appeared to know before anyone else that WikiLeaks had Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails, Corsi told them he simply figured it out on his own, the source said. He concluded, after seeing little about Podesta in the initial WikiLeaks dump of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, that the anti-secrecy organization was holding Podesta’s communications for an “October surprise,” the source said.

The source said he is aware of no evidence obtained by the Mueller team that would contradict that assertion.

Corsi maintained that he did not learn anything about the matter from WikiLeaks, which began dumping Podesta’s emails on Oct. 7, 2016, just hours after a tape became public on which Trump boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia. However, Corsi expressed in emails a willingness to travel to London and meet with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the source said.