Russian interference: Trump wanted to buy Assange's silence

The defense of Julian Assange, threatened with extradition to the United States, said Wednesday that Donald Trump offered the founder of Wikileaks to pardon him if he said that Russia is not involved in the leak of internal emails to American Democratic Party.

This assertion was made Wednesday in the British justice, at a hearing preceding the examination of the request for extradition to the United States of the Australian of 48 years, which must begin from next Monday. The decision should not be made for several months.

At the hearing, where Assange appeared via video conference, his defense cited a document in which his lawyer Jennifer Robinson said that the American president's proposal was made through US Republican MP Dana Rohrabacher, according to the British Press Association (PA) agency.

The document states that Mr. Rohrabacher "went to see Mr. Assange and told him, on the President's instructions, that he was offering him a pardon or some other solution, if Mr. Assange ... said that Russia has not nothing to do with the leaks from the Democratic Party, "according to PA.

The judge considered that this evidence was admissible.

The White House quickly refuted this information.

“The president knows almost nothing of Dana Rohrabacher except that he is a former elected official. He never spoke to her about this or almost any other subject. It is a pure invention, "said White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham in a statement.

Julian Assange's lawyer could not be reached by AFP.

U.S. intelligence has established that Democratic emails were hacked by Russian hackers as part of a Moscow campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election, where Donald Trump faced rival Democrat Hilary Clinton.

Wikileaks had published in 2016, at a key moment in the campaign, thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton team, which helped to discredit the candidate.

Detained in Belmarsh, south London since his arrest in April 2019 at the Embassy of Ecuador, Julian Assange is claimed by Washington. He faces up to 175 years in prison in the United States for espionage.

The American authorities accuse him of having endangered some of their sources at the time of the publication in 2010 of 250,000 diplomatic cables and around 500,000 confidential documents relating to the activities of the American army in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are no lawsuits against him for email leaks from the Democratic Party.