Former congressman confirms he offered to broker pardon for Assange
Enlarge / Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on November 6, 2018, in Costa Mesa, California, just before he learned he had lost his seat to a Democratic challenger. Rohrabacher, the most Putin-friendly member of Congress, visited with Julian Assange in 2017 to offer him a pardon in exchange for proof that Seth Rich, not Russian intelligence, had leaked the DNC emails. (credit: David McNew/Getty Images)
A former California congressman confirmed in an interview with Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff that he did offer to broker a pardon for Julian Assange in exchange for information that would exonerate Russia from the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign organization. Republican Dana Rohrabacher was seeking to prove that the emails were leaked by DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered in July 2016—and were not the product of a hacking campaign by Russian intelligence organizations.
Rohrabacher, who lost his seat in 2018, was a long-time cheerleader in Washington for Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. Using information provided to him directly by the Kremlin, Rohrabacher personally promoted an effort to remove the name of Sergei Magnitsky from the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, an anti-corruption law intended to sanction and punish officials involved in Magnitsky's imprisonment and death. (Magnitsky was a Russian tax lawyer murdered after he decided to testify against Russian Interior Ministry officials who had taken over the investment companies of his client and embezzled 5.4 billion rubles (about $230 million) from the Russian government himself.)
Rohrabacher is now a consultant to the cannabis industry. But in August 2017, while he was still a congressman, he visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, with Assange's attorney present. He claimed his goal was to "prove" Seth Rich's involvement—an already widely debunked conspiracy theory—and disprove charges that would later take the form of an indictment of 12 officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU).
Comments
Post a Comment