Enlarge / LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 19, 2020: A demonstrator wearing a Julian Assange mask attends a demonstration ahead of the preliminary hearing. Assange's lawyer claims President Donald Trump's administration had offered a pardon in exchange for covering up Russian involvement in the leaks of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 election. (credit: Ilyas Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In August of 2017, then-Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Rohrabacher told The Wall Street Journal that he was trying to broker a deal between Assange and the White House that would allow Wikileaks' Julian Assange to leave the embassy and be granted a pardon or similar clemency by the Trump administration—in exchange for information proving that the Russian government had not been the source of Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks.
But in court today, an attorney for Assange put a different spin on his dealings with Rohrabacher: the congressman promised a pardon in exchange for covering up Russia's role in the leaking of Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails. Assange's lawyer for his extradition hearings (Edward Fitzgerald) offered into evidence a statement from another Assange lawyer (Jennifer Robinson) which showed, Fitzgerald said, “Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks."
The US government is seeking Assange's extradition to face 18 charges (including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion) connected to the leak of Defense Department and State Department documents to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is presiding over the hearing at Westminster Magistrate's Court, ruled the statements by Robinson as admissible evidence.
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