[Shamu]

Title is misleading.

In the article, Rohrabacher says “I spoke to Julian Assange and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails I would petition the president to give him a pardon.”

Petition is quite different than offering.

[boomboomsubban]

Yes, "petition" offers plausible deniability in a matter Rohrabacher said needed "handled with care" as it could be harmful to the president.

[ThrowawayR2]

That interpretation at best offers a thin layer of (not very) plausible deniability. Even if the word "petition" was used, as a politician with decades of experience, Rohrabacher wouldn't even have brought the topic up unless the expectation was that the petition would succeed.

[mc32]

Didn’t Assange already make claims that that data trove did not come from Russia?

[undersuit]

You're stating Assange claims the DNC emails Wikileaks published were not obtained by the Russian Federation?

It's a great hedge, like how Rohrabacher didn't actually offer a pardon, just offered to petition the president for one.

'Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

[lurquer]

Repeatedly.

[0xy]

You are correct, but just to clarify he specifically stated it did not come from the Russian government, not that the source was not from Russia (I'm not implying that, just clarifying).

[m0zg]

And he also did not request any specific answer. Someone at the DNC is trying _really_ hard to get ahead of damaging information about the DNC leak. If Assange reveals the source, and it's in the DNC itself, that would utterly destroy whatever remains of the "Russian collusion" narrative they worked hard to push for the last 3 years. So you can see why all the stops are being pulled here, and why they are trying to discredit Assange ahead of that.