⁍ A lawyer for Julian Assange told a London court on Friday that she was present when an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump offered to arrange a pardon for the WikiLeaks founder.

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⁍ Jennifer Robinson said she observed a meeting at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017 between Assange and Republican then-U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher.

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⁍ She said Rohrabacher and an assistant offered to arrange a pardon for Assange in return for information about the hacking of Democratic emails before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

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– Julian Assange’s lawyer says a Republican congressman offered the WikiLeaks founder a pardon in exchange for information on hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign, Reuters reports. Jennifer Robinson testified Friday at a London court where Assange is fighting to avoid extradition to the US, where he is charged with conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law over the release of confidential cables by WikiLeaks in 2010-2011. Robinson said US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and an assistant offered to arrange a pardon for Assange in return for information on the source of Democratic emails hacked by WikiLeaks. “The proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrabacher was that Mr. Assange identify the source for the 2016 election publications in return for some form of pardon, assurance, or agreement, which would both benefit President Trump politically and prevent US indictment and extradition,” Robinson said in her witness statement. Rohrabacher denied being sent on Trump’s behalf and said he was acting on his own when he offered to ask Trump for a pardon for Assange, who took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was accused of sex crimes. Assange’s legal team first said at hearings in February that Rohrabacher had conveyed a pardon offer to Assange. At the time, the White House called the assertion that Trump had tried to reach a deal with Assange “a complete fabrication and a total lie.”