GOP lawmaker setting up meeting to share Assange info on DNC hack with Trump

A GOP lawmaker says a meeting is being set up with President Trump to share information from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about the hack of the DNC during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told Sean Hannity on Monday in remarks first reported by CNN that a “rendezvous” between himself and Trump was being set up by “other parties” interested in the meeting.

“It is my understanding from other parties who are trying to arrange a rendezvous with myself and the President, it is being arranged for me to give him the firsthand information from [Assange],” Rohrabacher said.

{mosads}

Assange says the DNC hack was an “inside job” and not the work of hackers linked to Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community believes.

Rohrabacher became the first U.S. lawmaker to meet with Assange earlier this month. They met at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher said the information Assange provided him, if made public, would “outrage” Americans.

“If the information comes out, there will be an outrage among the American people that their time has been wasted,” Rohrabacher said.

“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,” he added. “When the American people realize that this is a con job and a power grab they’ll be upset.”

In a previous interview, Rohrabacher told The Hill that Assange “emphatically stated” during their August meeting that Russia was not behind the 2016 leak of politically damaging documents from the DNC servers, adding that they would go into “further details” in later meetings.

“Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails,” Rohrabacher said at the time. “We left with the understanding that we would be going into further details in the near future.”