Mueller’s Team Will Question Him Under Oath. Who Will Respond?

Randy Credico, a comedian and left-wing political activist, has an appointment Sept. 7. With Robert Mueller. Before a grand jury. Under oath.

And he is planning to do impressions, because that’s what he does.

“It’s like, ask me if I’m going to breathe? Of course I’m going to do impressions,” Credico, 64, said. “I’m taking the grand jury very seriously but doing impressions is part of the package just to calm my nerves,” he said, adding, “You got to give that grand jury some comic relief.”

Mueller is interested in Credico’s odd friendship with Roger Stone, the self-proclaimed political dirty trickster, Republican consultant and President Donald Trump’s longtime political adviser.

Credico is seen in New York political circles as a dedicated if madcap activist. But he acknowledges that he also took part over the years in some of Stone’s acts of political deception.

And Stone has claimed Credico was a conduit to WikiLeaks, telling him when dirt on Hillary Clinton would be released.

Credico views WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, who has been holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for six years, as a hero and friend. Credico has visited Assange at the embassy three times since the 2016 presidential election and conducted a phone interview with him for a radio show before the election.

But he said he never had inside information about dirt on Clinton and will tell the grand jury that he never relayed WikiLeaks’ plans to Stone. What’s more, he and Stone have bitterly fallen out over the issue.

Not that Credico hasn’t made light of his purported role. He said he sometimes sarcastically introduced himself as “Randy Credico, the back channel,” at events like the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

His testimony is no joke, of course.

Mueller has already charged more than one person with making false statements. But Credico, while not formally cooperating with the investigation, said he would share whatever information he has and, toward that end, recently met voluntarily with Mueller’s investigators in advance of his testimony.

Credico did political work for Stone for years, often impersonating famous politicos in robocalls. Despite vast political differences, they aligned on issues like marijuana legalization. Credico was also involved in Stone’s attempt in 2010 to establish a pro-marijuana and prostitution political party in New York.

“There’s 16 years I’ve been around Stone,” Credico said, speaking in interviews and through text messages. “I don’t know what exactly this is focused on. I don’t know if it’s about Assange, if it’s about Stone. I really don’t know.”

Politics in the Trump era has always had a reality show feel, but the Randy Credico chapter of the Mueller inquiry is a high point. Credico is a political performance artist and sometime New York protest candidate. He is a man who has a “Tonight Show” appearance on his résumé and also counts himself as a protégé of activist lawyer William Kunstler.

Credico campaigned so aggressively against the tough Rockefeller drug laws that The New Yorker once called him “The Man Who Screamed So Loud the Drug Laws Changed.” He has been known to dress as the Greek philosopher Diogenes and prowl the state Capitol building, where he once protested marijuana laws by lighting up a joint.

He also donned cartoonish prison stripes to protest private prisons, leading the state pension fund to tighten its investment restrictions.

“I absolutely give credit to Credico,” Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York state comptroller, said in an interview. “He’s the one who put it back on the map for me.” He called Credico “one of those colorful New York characters” but one who was “fighting for change and making the world better.”

Credico lamented that his association with Stone might obscure his activism, and called his connection to Stone “worse than having scurvy.”

Stone testified to the House Intelligence Committee last year that “a journalist,” whom he later identified as Credico, told him in 2016 that the WikiLeaks material on Clinton “would be released in October.”

“He told me this repeatedly from mid-August and throughout September,” Stone said in an email, adding that “he is my only source of information regarding WikiLeaks, as limited as it was.”

Credico adamantly disagreed.

“I couldn’t confirm it,” he said of WikiLeaks’ plans, “because I didn’t know anything.”

Credico was also subpoenaed last year by the House Intelligence Committee, but asserted Fifth Amendment privileges.

“The Senate is better than the House, but the House is like working a strip joint, as a comedian,” he said, and then specified that it was “like working a strip joint in Orlando, Florida.” “I used to work strip joints, man,” he added.

Refereeing between Randy Credico and Roger Stone is not easy.

Credico is a rambling raconteur with a history of drug and alcohol problems — “the whole 90s I was doing cocaine,” he said. Stone is a master of disinformation tactics and a frequent presence on Infowars, a website that spins bogus conspiracy theories and peddles questionable dietary supplements.

Their relationship has been turbulent. In 2007, Stone was forced to resign as a consultant to the New York state Senate Republicans after he was accused of leaving a profane voicemail for the father of then Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Stone briefly blamed Credico for the episode. He also once started rumors that Credico was dead. (Stone called it “a running joke.”)

Credico shared a few emails he has received from Stone this year, many laced with unprintable profanity.

“You are exposed as a liar who wears women’s underwear,” Stone said in one email, adding in another: “People hate rats and liars — u are both.”

Stone said it was “impossible to address” the emails “out of context.”

Stone and Credico first worked together in 2002, on the unsuccessful independent bid by Tom Golisano, a billionaire businessman, to become the governor of New York. Credico was drawn by Golisano’s support for drug sentencing reform.

Credico did work for Stone in two campaigns for the Broward County sheriff in Florida.

“He had me doing some dirty tricks I don’t want to get into,” Credico said. “Both times. Had me doing things that were untoward.”

He was pressed for details. “I was doing robocalls, all right? Inventive robocalls. That’s all I will tell you. You can imagine since I’m an impressionist, I was doing robocalls. Pretending to be politicians endorsing people.”

Some of these were directed at specific communities. He said an impression of Ed Koch was used in recorded calls aimed at Jewish voters, while an Al Sharpton bit targeted African-American voters.

Stone said Credico’s impressions “were always identified as parodies,” but Credico said the disclaimers were “faster than Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

He said he also worked with Stone on an Ohio gaming referendum, a county commission race in Dade County and he recorded voices for Infowars.

“It’s very difficult to explain to people how I could possibly be associated with someone connected to Roy Cohn. And Nixon and Reagan and Trump and Marcos and Mobutu,” he said, listing Stone’s mentors and clients. “I guess he had a Rasputin/Svengali kind of spell on me.”

Right now, Credico is hoping to hold it together after briefly lapsing earlier this year after an MSNBC appearance.

“I got to stay sober until Sept. 7,” Credico said. “You know what I mean? That’s my day. Because if I start, I won’t stop. I don’t want to go in there all wacked out, inarticulate, mumbling and all of that. The last year has been very difficult.”

Credico said he has been given the OK by the special counsel’s team to bring his dog, Bianca, a fluffy 14-pound Coton de Tulear, to the grand jury proceedings, and is considering doing so.

Bianca has accompanied him to media appearances, and is yet another point of contention with Stone, who once taunted Credico by threatening to take Bianca; Stone now says he was only concerned about the dog’s health.

Credico called Bianca a therapy dog.

“If I have her with me, I definitely can’t take her to a bar,” he said, adding, “She’ll protect me from my demons.”

He was on his game during a 90-minute interview, running through impressions of Jackie Mason, George W. Bush, Sharpton, Koch, Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan. His Rudy Giuliani, in which he retracts his head, froglike, into hunched shoulders, is particularly adept.

If nothing else, the grand jury will not be in for the usual fare.

“I can’t even begin to imagine,” DiNapoli, the state comptroller, said. “One would wish there would be livestreaming of that.”

Credico’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said, “It’s a serious investigation, and Randy is obligated to tell the truth, and that’s what he’s going to do.”

But he conceded impressions were not off the table.

“You know Randy,” he said. “He’s not entirely controllable.”