Trump offered to pardon Assange, court told

LONDON • US President Donald Trump offered to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if he said Russia had nothing to do with WikiLeaks' publication of Democratic Party e-mails in 2016, a London court heard.

Assange appeared by video link from prison on Wednesday as lawyers discussed the management of his hearing next week to decide whether he should be extradited to the United States.

At Westminster Magistrates' Court, Assange's barrister Edward Fitzgerald referred to a witness statement by former US Republican representative Dana Rohrabacher who visited Assange in 2017, saying he had been sent by the President to offer a pardon.

The pardon would come on the condition that Assange say the Russians were not involved in the e-mail leak that damaged Mrs Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016 against Mr Trump, Mr Rohrabacher's statement said.

White House spokesman Stephanie Grisham denied the assertion. "The President barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he's an ex-congressman. He's never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject," she said.

Mr Rohrabacher, likewise, said he was acting on his own when he offered to ask Mr Trump for a pardon if Assange would say how he got the e-mails. He said he relayed Assange's willingness to cooperate to the White House but heard nothing further.

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to try to help Mr Trump win, in part by hacking and releasing e-mails embarrassing to Mrs Clinton.

Russia denied meddling and Mr Trump denied any campaign collusion with Moscow. A probe by US special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that members of Mr Trump's campaign conspired with Russia during the election.

Assange, 48, who spent seven years holed up in Ecuador's London embassy before he was dragged out last April, is wanted in the US on 18 counts, including conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law. He could spend decades behind bars if convicted.

WikiLeaks made global headlines in 2010 when it published a classified US military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people.

REUTERS