Far right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is going to have his $350 million lawsuit against Special Counsel Robert Mueller and various other Justice Department elements heard by Judge Ellen Huvelle, a randomly selected judge, and not Judge Richard Leon as he had wanted.
NPR:
Jerome Corsi, a conservative commentator who helped popularize the false idea that President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S., claims he has been unlawfully surveilled and pressured by government investigators leading the Russia probe.
Corsi's attorney, Larry Klayman, tried to land the dispute with Judge Richard Leon.
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The theory goes like this: Since the judge ruled in his favor in another case, years earlier, that the government engaged in dragnet surveillance, Leon should also preside over Corsi's new claims.
Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Tulis cried foul. She cited a rule dictating that only cases with identical litigants could be assigned to the same judge.
Unlike her courtroom opponent, Tulis kept her statements to a bare minimum and used only a few moments of her allotted 10 minutes of argument time.
The judge swiftly agreed with her, not even taking a recess to deliberate.
"A related case is not whatever a plaintiff wishes it to be," Leon said. To accept Klayman's argument "would invite precisely the sort of judge shopping that this system is designed to avoid."
And, the judge added, in his two decades on the federal bench, "I have seen my fair share of novel and difficult questions. This case has not been one of them."
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The brief hearing did reveal a few new details: Corsi said the FBI had reached out to his stepson, apparently after investigators read an electronic message in which Corsi and the stepson discussed a "scrub" of a computer.
Corsi told reporters that machine had nothing to do with Russian election interference, WikiLeaks or other intermediaries who may have facilitated hacking or publishing of stolen emails from the Clinton campaign or the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
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In late November 2018, Corsi announced that he would reject a plea offer from the special counsel that covered one felony count of perjury for lying during the investigation. He later entertained several media interviews and gave reporters copies of the draft documents the special counsel had prepared.
Having spurned the Justice Department's offer of a deal, Corsi tried to go on offense with his lawsuit against Mueller, and he said Thursday he had already turned over many other devices and materials to the special counsel's office.
Judge Hands Setback To Conspiracy Theorist Corsi In His Suit Against DOJ (NPR)