On Aug. 21, Stone, one of President Trump's longtime advisers, tweeted: "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel." John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, and his emails were released by WikiLeaks several weeks later.

Corsi, a witness in the Mueller investigation, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that Stone called him on Aug. 30, 2016, and asked him to come up with an "alternative explanation" for the tweet. Corsi began writing a memo for Stone describing the business dealings of John Podesta and his brother, Tony, and Corsi and Stone would later say this is what Stone's tweet was about, even though the memo was written after the fact.