A U.S. congressman who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (shown) in exile says Assange “has absolute proof” that the leaked DNC e-mails published by WikiLeaks last year did not come from “the Russians.” Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) wants to help Assange reach President Trump with an offer: In exchange for a pardon, Assange will make that proof available. There is just one problem: Trump’s staff is keeping the deal from Trump, according to the congressman.
Assange has long claimed that the DNC e-mails that WikiLeaks published last year — much to the embarrassment of the Democrat establishment — were not given to WikiLeaks by Russians or hackers. Last month, he offered to prove it. But since Assange has lived in exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 due to both criminal charges in Sweden for sexual misconduct (which Assange says were trumped up after he released thousands of diplomatic cables and other U.S. government documents) and fear of being arrested and charged with espionage by the U.S. government, he wants something in return for the evidence: He has asked for a pardon from President Trump.
But on September 23, Trump — who famously stated “I love WikiLeaks” when he was on the campaign trail — told the press he has “never heard” of Assange’s offer to make a deal in exchange for the evidence that would dismantle the Trump/Russia fake news narrative. Rohrabacher says that the information is being kept from President Trump by his own staff. “I think that when he hears that there’s been an offer made, he will insist on knowing about it,” Rohrabacher said.
Late last week, Rohrabacher said that he believes that Trump would “get behind” such a deal, if he were aware of it. “I think he will because I’m going to try to overcome the obstacles in the way — which happens to be his staff,” Rohrabacher said, adding, “So in the next few weeks, my job is to try to make sure the president’s staff doesn’t fence him off from this offer.”
Since much of the Trump/Russia narrative rests on the foundation — laid by Hillary Clinton, the liberal mainstream media, and Trump’s enemies in the intelligence community — of the claim that the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails published by WikiLeaks were provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers as part of a conspiracy to ensure the election of Trump (as Putin’s “puppet”), the evidence offered by Assange would go a long way to putting that fake news narrative to rest for good.
Representative Rohrabacher says that Assange “has a story to tell” and that he is “the one guy that I think the American people and the people in the world need to hear,” adding, “and he’s the one guy that now our intelligence agencies, as well as the powers that be in Washington don’t want anybody to hear.” But Rohrabacher did hear Assange. In fact, he took a special trip in August to visit Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy to hear him out. As a result of what he heard and saw during that three-hour meeting, Rohrabacher says Assange “has absolute proof of who gave him those emails.”
In an interview with The Hill in August, Rohrabacher said, “Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” adding, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.” Rohrabacher went on to say that “Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public,” but that “the rest of the message is for the president directly.”
The liberal establishment used both the occasion of Rohrabacher’s visit to Assange and Assange’s message to the president to continue propagating the myth of a Trump/Russia connection with Assange as the messenger boy. This time, though, they included Rohrabacher in their attacks. Adrienne Watson, the DNC’s deputy communications director, released a statement long on snark and short on facts. She wrote, “We’ll take the word of the U.S. intelligence community over Julian Assange and Putin’s favorite Congressman.” Ah, the obligatory attempt at guilt-by-association. Given the fact that the intelligence community has been caught — time and again — in recent history lying to the American people, it requires something akin to blindness to follow them down the Trump/Russia rabbit hole. Assange, on the other hand, has spent more than 10 years proving his credibility. In that time, WikiLeaks has published literally millions of documents. Not one of those documents has ever been shown to have been manufactured by WikiLeaks.
As for Representative Rohrabacher, he seems undeterred by the attempted smear, stating that he will continue to work to ensure that the president is aware of Assange’s offer.
Photo: AP Images
