Jerome Corsi's request for specific judge in Mueller lawsuit denied

FILE - In this Oct. 7, 2008, file photo, Jerome Corsi, right, arrives at the immigration department in Nairobi, Kenya (AP Photo) 

A Washington, D.C., federal judge on Thursday denied a request by conservative author Jerome Corsi to assign himself to hear Corsi's lawsuit against Special Counsel Robert Mueller alleging illegal and unconstitutional surveillance.

Corsi's attorney, Larry Klayman, argued that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon should hear the case because of its relation to other cases that Leon had ruled on, involving allegations of illegal surveillance by the National Security Agency and other government entities.

"A related case is not whatever a plaintiff wishes it to be," Leon said in denying Klayman's request. The judge added that if he agreed to hear the case, it "would invite precisely the sort of judge shopping that this system is designed to avoid."

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Corsi, a former Washington bureau chief for the conspiracy theorist website Infowars, has accused Mueller's investigators of trying to bully him into giving "false testimony" against President Trump and improperly pressuring him to strike a plea deal -- something Corsi says he won’t sign.

According to Corsi’s complaint, the special counsel team wanted him to demonstrate that he'd acted as a liaison for political operative Roger Stone, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Trump campaign over the release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

The complaint states that Mueller’s office is now “knowingly and deceitfully threatening to charge Dr. Corsi with an alleged false statement,” unless he gives them “false testimony” against Trump and others.

Corsi: Mueller wanted me to lie

The purported threat of a false-statement charge, according to the complaint, pertains to a July 2016 email from Stone asking him to “get to” Assange and get the pending emails.

Corsi’s complaint says he was unable to initially give “accurate” testimony on that point until he could reload emails on his laptop. The complaint says he later amended his answers. In a Nov. 27 interview with Fox News’ "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Corsi said Mueller’s team “was happy” with his answers until he couldn’t “give them what they wanted.”

Fox News' Judson Berger and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.