Another day, another plot-twist in the legal battles of Australian activist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange – this time, involving US President Donald Trump and the endlessly controversial 2016 US presidential election.
To cut a very long story short, the US is trying to extradite Assange from the UK so they can try him for 18 counts of obtaining and publishing confidential government info. If found guilty in the US, Assange could face up to 175 years in the slammer.
Assange has long claimed he’d be treated unfairly at that proposed trial. As part of his legal battle to avoid extradition, Assange’s lawyers have reportedly tabled evidence alleging that Trump vowed to pardon Assange of those charges – if he cleared Russia of hacking Trump’s political rivals in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
The BBC reports that Assange’s barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, used a pre-trial hearing to provide evidence claiming that US Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange when he was still holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy in 2017.
Citing another of Assange’s lawyers, Fitzgerald said the claim showed Rohrabacher “was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange… said Russia had nothing to do with the [Democratic National Convention] leaks.”
Don’t remember the DNC email leaks? Look, there’s been so much brain-scrambling bullshit since the 2016 election that it’s easy to lose track, but those leaks, some of which appeared on Wikileaks, were an considerable blow to the Democrats in the lead-up to Hillary Clinton‘s stunning loss.
Russian hackers were found to be the primary suspect. But Trump copped a serious blowback from that whole situation, as allegations swirled that the Trump campaign actively cooperated with Russian state operatives to hack his political rivals.
Trump is obviously still the president even after an investigation into those allegations, but if Assange’s legal team is to be believed, he tried really, really fucking hard to distance himself from any suggestion of colluding with a foreign power – and allegedly offered one of the America’s most-wanted men a Get Out Of Jail Free card in exchange for some positive testimony.
In a statement obtained by the BBC, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the latest claim from Assange’s legal team is “a complete fabrication and a total lie.”
Regardless of whatever she thinks, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser admitted the report as evidence for Assange’s extradition trial, which officially kicks off next week.
