Assange Was Offered Pardon In Exchange For Clearing Russia, Rohrabacher Confirms

A recent report emerged claiming that Julian Assange, the embattled founder of Wikileaks, was offered a pardon by the White House in exchange for proof that the Russians had not been involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016. On Thursday, former congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed that he had been involved in making the offer to Assange.

Rohrabacher said that in August 2017, he was part of a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in which he made the offer to Assange. The former California representative told Yahoo News that he had hoped to unearth evidence to back up the unfounded claim that the leaked DNC emails were sourced from a former staffer, Seth Rich, not the Russian government.

Rich was murdered during a botched robbery attempt in 2016, but conspiracy theorists have since insisted that he was assassinated for exposing the DNC’s handling of the 2016 primary. Although this has been shown to be an unsupported version of events, many Trump supporters still hold it as truth.

Rohrabacher added that after the meeting with Assange, he called then-White House chief of staff John Kelly to report on the offer; both men were aware that if word of the pardon offer reached the media, it could prove potentially damaging to the president. Rohrabacher said he was unsure whether Kelly had discussed pardoning Assange with Trump.

After the pardon offer was revealed to the public by Assange’s legal representation Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, was quick to call the claim a “complete fabrication.” She added that Trump “barely knows Dana Rohrabacher” and had never discussed Assange with him.

The former Republican congressman confirmed that he hadn’t directly discussed making the pardon offer to Assange with the president, but had instead hoped the Wikileaks founder would agree to cooperate before Rohrabacher approached Trump about a pardon. Assange “knew I could get to the president,” he said.

Although Rohrabacher has since lost his bid to retain his seat in the House of Representatives, he was a staunch defender of Trump while in Congress, pushing back over claims that he and his campaign had colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential race.