Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) on Tuesday claimed that a meeting between himself and President Donald Trump was being set up so that the congressman could brief the President on a recent meeting he had with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
“It is my understanding from other parties who are trying to arrange the rendezvous, that a rendezvous with myself and the President, it is being arranged for me to give him the firsthand information,” Rohrabacher said on Sean Hannity’s radio show, according to a clip highlighted by CNN.
Rohrabacher, who has been described as “Putin’s favorite congressman,” met with Assange earlier in August and returned to relay Assange’s claim that Russia did not orchestrate the leak of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. At the time, Rohrabacher pledged to give Assange’s message to Trump, and he now claims that the wheels are in motion to set up that meeting.
It’s not clear, based on the congressman’s claims, that any such meeting is being arranged. The White House declined to comment to TPM on Rohrabacher’s comments.
The congressman also recently promoted a report claiming that the hack into the Demcoratic National Committee’s server was an inside job.
He echoed this in his interview with Hannity on Tuesday, claiming that the DNC hack was not carried out by the Russians and that the narrative of Russian interference was crafted by the liberal “establishment” to distract from Hillary Clinton’s scandals.
“If the information comes out, there will be an outrage among the American people that their time has been wasted,” he told Hannity. “They’ve had this story over and over and again shoved down their throats as if the Russians colluded with Donald Trump, and this is an attempt, as I say, to negate their vote in the ballot booth. When the American people realize that this is a con job and a power grab, they’ll be upset.”
“I’m trying to get this out in the public now where we can get this Julian Assange thing straightened out so that people know that it wasn’t the Russians that hacked into the system, and that’s not how this information was released,” Rohrabacher added.
