Claiming she had the approval of 74-year-old President Donald Trump, a lawyer for fugitive WikeLeaks founder Julian Assange played fast-and-loose, making claims that made zero sense. Trying to spring Aassange out of a British jail, Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson said there as a “win-win” deal with Trump in which he would pardon Assange’s in exchange for disclosing who hacked the 2016 emails from the Democratic National Committee [DNC] and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former Campaign Chairman John D. Podesta. Assange refused to reveal his source, suspected as Russian intelligence. U.S. Department of Justice has tried to extradite Asange to face charges for divulging classified information about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Robinson claimed she met with former Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) and Trump associate Charles Johnson Aug. 15, 2017.
Robinson tried to make a compelling case against extradition, to let Assange out of jail but there’s no factual basis to it. Rohrbacher and Johnson were clearly on their own trying to broker a deal with Assange in 2017. One year later, Rohrbachers was bounced out of office in the 2018 Midterm elections. Robinson told the London judge that Rohrbacher and Johsnon has President Trump’s blessing to offer Assange a quid pro quo for a pardon, making Trump look like he’s unscrupulous. Robinson said Rohrbacher and Johsnson “wanted us to believe they were acting on behalf of the president” and that the president “was aware of and had approved of them coming to meet,” something stretched to the breaking point. Robinson said when they returned to Washington they would have an audience with president to discuss the proposal to get Assange a presidential pardon.
No matter how much sympathy Rohrbacher or Johnson had for Assange, they had no such deal with Trump for a pardon or anything else. Locked up inside the Ecuadorian embassy for years, Assange sought refuge on a rape charge from Sweden, where he was wanted by Interpol for criminal prosecution. Telling the judge that Rohrbacher and Johnson wanted to present an offer “what might me necessary to he him out” with a “win-win” situation to help Assange “get on with his life,” Robinson gave the judge the impression that she should let Assange out of jail because he’s backed by the president of the United States. Rohrbacher wanted to proved that Trump had nothing to do with Russian hacked emails in July 2016, when Hillary and Special Counsel Robert Mueller pointed fingers at Trump. If Rohrbacher got Assange to admit they came from Russian intelligence, it would get Trump off the hook.
Much ado was made by former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann of Assange and the hacked emails, so much so he went after Trump ally and self-described dirty trickster, 68-year-old Rogers Stone. Weissmann accused Stone of having a personal relationship with Assange, confirmed from some murky emails exchanged between Stone and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. When Stone denied contact with Assange, Weissmann charged him with obstruction, perjury and lying to Congress. Stone was eventually convicted on seven counts Nov. 15, 2019, eventually sentenced Feb. 20, 2020 to 40 months. Trump commuted Stone’s prison sentence July 10, three days before reporting to prison. When you consider all the drama with Stone, it showed how desperate the Mueller team was for any kind of victory. Taking the legal battle to London, showed there’s no end to the drama.
Mueller and Weissmann were so convinced they stumbled on the real dirt behind the 2016 presidential campaign, they railroaded a jury to convict Stone. Stone bloviated about his contact with Assange but in reality he was out of the loop and Trump knew it. Trump had been telling the press for four years that there was nothing but a witch-hunt and hoax behind the Mueller investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Assange’s attorney capitalized on all the hubbub over Russian collusion to try to get her client out of jail. “The proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrbacher was that Assange identify the source of the 2016 election publications in return for some kind of pardon, assurance or agreement which would both benefit President Trump politically and prevent U.S. indictment and extradition,” Robinson told the judge.
Making up everything possible to spring Assange from jail, Robinson blew a lot of smoke in a London courtroom based on pure speculation about Trump’s alleged approval of any kind of agreement to get Assange off the hook. Rohrbacher admitted after he left office that he never talked with Trump about anything connected with Assange. Assange’s attorney played fast-and-lose making claims that Trump would consider handing Assange a pardon, someone he doesn’t know. Assange also knows that if he ratted out Russian intelligence, he’ll wind up like former spy Sergei Scripal, his daughter Yulia or, more recently, Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny surviving Novichok poisoning. Anyway Assange turns, he’ll either lose his life or spend the rest of it in prison if he’s indicted to the U.S. Assange considers himself a “whistleblower” but to the DOJ he’s a fugitive from the law.
