Former GOP congressman says he proposed a pardon for Julian Assange if he said Russian didn't hack the DNC - but says Trump didn't tell him to do it

• Former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, one of President Trump's staunchest defenders in the Russia investigation, confims that he spoke to Julian Assange about a possible presidential pardon.
• In a London court Wednesday, Assange's lawyers asserted that Rohrabacher had offered Assange a pardon by Trump in exchange for saying that Russia was not involved in hacking and releasing DNC emails in 2016.
• Rohrabacher and Assange met in London in 2017. Rohrabacher sought evidence for a debunked conspiracy theory that the death of a former DNC staffer, who was killed in July 2016 in what police say was a botched robbery, was actually linked to Hillary Clinton.
• Rohrabacher said on Wednesday that he had discussed a pardon with Assange. But he said he had not acted as an emissary for Trump or his associates, and only "briefly" discussed the matter with former chief of staff John Kelly. He says the pardon conversation went nowhere, and he never discussed it with Trump.
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Former Republican congressman Dana Rohrbacher confirmed statements by Julian Assange's lawyers that he had floated the WikiLeaks founder a presidential pardon if he said Russia was not behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.

President Donald Trump has long decried reports that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, which have cast a shadow over much of his presidency, as a hoax. And Assange has insisted that the Russian government was not the source of a drove of DNC emails published via WikiLeaks.

Once known as "Putin's favorite congressman" for his pro-Russia stance, Rohrabacher embraced the theory that Russia did not actually hack the DNC during the last presidential election, despite the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that it did. In 2018, former special counsel Robert Mueller also indicted 12 Russian intelligence officials for the hack. Rohrabacher also supports the debunked conspiracy theory that the death of a DNC staffer named Seth Rich, who police say was killed in a botched robbery in 2016, was linked to the Clintons.

At a pre-extradition hearing in London, Assange's lawyers said they planned to submit evidence that Rohrabacher made an offer of a pardon as an emissary of the president, The Daily Beast reported.

Rohrbacher visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 while the activist was still under asylum there but before the United States indicted him on espionage charges.

On Wednesday, Rohrabacher confirmed that he had discussed a pardon with Assange in 2017 but insisted that Trump and his associates had not directed him to do so, and that the conversation ultimately went nowhere.

"When speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him," Rohrabacher wrote on his personal website.

He characterized the visit as his "own fact finding mission at personal expense."

"At no time did I talk to President Trump about Julian Assange," Rohrabacher wrote, adding that he was "not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange."

After his return to Washington, Rohrabacher writes that he "spoke briefly" about the matter with the president's former chief of staff, John Kelly, and "I told him that Julian Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon."

Rohrbacher reiterated this version of events in an interview with Yahoo News on Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to the Washington Post that "The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he's an ex-congressman. He's never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject. It is a complete fabrication and a total lie."

Following the 2017 visit, Rohrabacher, who was ousted from his seat in 2018, had said Assange "emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails." Assange had said in a 2017 interview with Sean Hannity that the Russian government was not the source of the trove of DNC emails published by WikiLeaks.

Assange is currently facing extradition to the United States, which has charged him with helping to steal sensitive intelligence related to the Iraq war. The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but the U.S. had been investigating him since 2010. Assange claims that the charges are politically motivated.

Assange sought asylum in Ecuador's embassy in 2012 after facing extradition to Sweden, which sought him on allegations of sexual assault. Sweden ultimately dropped the case in November 2019.

Assange was expelled from the embassy in April 2019 after his hosts accused him of bad behavior and using the diplomatic outpost as a "center for spying," allowing for his arrest by British authorities. He is being held at a British prison as he awaits an extradition decision.

In his statement Wednesday, Rohrabacher called on Trump to "pardon Julian Assange, who is the true whistleblower of our time."