Free Republic

Both the White House and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) have denied offering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon in exchange for his denying Russian involvement in stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016. One of Assange’s lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald, said in British court on Feb. 19 that Rohrabacher made the offer on behalf of President Donald Trump when visiting Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called it “complete fabrication and a total lie.” “The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman,” she said. “He’s...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said Monday that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was “cowardly” for announcing that he would not defend Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and would not campaign for his election. Ryan made his announcement on a conference call with fellow members of the Republican caucus on Monday morning, just hours after Trump had turned in a strong debate performance against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in St. Louis on Sunday night. “Leaders are supposed to stand firm and solid in moments of crisis,” Rohrabacher told the Orange County Register. “Instead, he’s in a panic. It’s not good...

Former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed in a new interview that during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks. In a phone interview with Yahoo News, Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that WikiLeaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have...

The Russian woman who was indicted on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Moscow reportedly socialized with an associate of then-candidate Donald Trump's during the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign. Citing documents and testimony that was provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and later described to the newspaper, The Washington Post reported Friday that Maria Butina had many interactions with former Trump campaign aide, J.D. Gordon, over email. Gordon served as the Trump campaign's director of national security for six months until departing in August 2016 for a role on Trump's transition team. The Post reported...

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s new chief of staff heads to Washington on Wednesday to meet with critics and supporters of the United Nations (news - web sites) following a critical report of U.N. actions in the oil-for-food program in Iraq (news - web sites). Mark Malloch Brown's high-profile trip is aimed at informing U.S. lawmakers about ongoing U.N. management and administrative reforms and appears to be the opening salvo in a new offensive by Annan to present the world body in a more positive light. One of the U.S. lawmakers Malloch Brown is scheduled...

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican fixture in California who represented Orange County for 15 terms, has lost his bid for re-election. His defeat underlines the party’s setbacks in a part of the state that was long a symbol of its political dominance. The Associated Press called the race on Saturday, with Harley Rouda receiving 52 percent of the vote to Mr. Rohrabacher’s 48 percent. Mr. Rouda, 56, is a former Republican turned Democrat who became a symbol of the Democratic efforts to win back Congress this year. Mr. Rohrabacher, 71, was viewed as particularly vulnerable because he defended Russia in...

In Calif House District 48, Dana Rohrabacher leads by only 27 votes over Harley Rouda with 52 percent of precincts reporting

A new poll released Friday shows incumbent Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher with a nine-point lead over Democrat challenger Harley Rouda with just days to go before the midterm elections on November 6. ....................................................... Strategist John Thomas notes: “While California overall breaks in favor of Democrats and against Trump, CA-48 is proving to be the firewall holding back the blue wave.” The poll is the first to show Rohrabacher with a statistically significant lead. Rohrabacher’s rise in the polls is remarkable, given that Rouda and his allies have outspent Rohrabacher many times over. .......................................... Thomas elaborated on other factors helping Rohrabacher:...

Dana Rohrabacher, the embattled Orange County congressman known for his close ties to the Kremlin, said Friday that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions should resign after showing disloyalty to President Trump by refusing to shut down the Russia investigation. For a Republican incumbent already in danger of losing his seat in a district that favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, the remarks carried the risk of serious political damage.

Full title............................EXCLUSIVE: How Russian lawyer and Soviet spy who met Don Jr schmoozed the Washington elite with wine and hors d'ouevres days later - and Republican lawmaker's staff sent the invitations.............. Natalia Veselnitskaya held a controversial film party at elite venue the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue last summer - just after she met Donald Trump Jr Also there was Rinat Akhmetshin, the ex-Soviet spy who on Friday admitted he was in the meeting too Screening was of The Magnistsky Act - Behind The Scenes, a documentary about the whisteblower who supporters say was murdered to cover up tax fraud Documentary...

House Republican leadership is agitated after the Washington Post published a transcript from a secret recording of one of the inner-sanctum conversations in the office of Speaker Paul Ryan. The transcript shows House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy joking with his colleagues that then-candidate Trump and California Republican Dana Rohrabacher were both on the payroll of Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The unknown is frustrating," said one senior GOP aide, referring to the possibility that this wasn't the only private leadership conversation that was secretly recorded. Keep reading 210 words Behind-the-scenes: House leadership sources have pored over the article and are privately...

Excerpts - Forty-six states — including Sessions' home state of Alabama — have legalized some form of medical marijuana in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eight of those states also allow recreational marijuana. The only legal protection now for medical marijuana growers, processors, sellers and users is a temporary measure sponsored by Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Democratic Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer prohibiting the U.S. Department of Justice from using government funds to target them.

The GOP tax reform bill known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” came one important step closer to becoming law on Tuesday when the bill passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 227 to 203. No Democrats voted for the bill, of course. The party of big, centralized government isn’t for anyone keep more of their own money, other than perhaps illegal aliens and welfare recipients, and will never vote to cut anybody’s taxes. But not all Republicans voted for the bill either. Here are the 12 Republicans — all from high tax states — who joined...

The House Intelligence Committee is set to interview Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and British publicist Rob Goldstone on Monday as part of its ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, CNN reported. Wasserman Schultz resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last July after leaked emails showed party officials appeared to favor Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Wasserman Schultz has also denied knowing about an arrangement for the DNC to help fund a dossier containing salacious allegations about President Trump. Clinton’s campaign and the DNC reportedly paid millions to a law firm involved...

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is investigating a meeting between President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.)...

"President Donald Trump is being blocked from knowing he can pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for information vindicating Russia of hacking allegations, according to Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Trump told reporters Sunday that he has “never heard” of a potential deal with Assange."

President Donald Trump is being blocked from knowing he can pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for information vindicating Russia of hacking allegations, according to Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Trump told reporters Sunday that he has “never heard” of a potential deal with Assange. “I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview. Rohrabacher met...

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said someone leaked information about his call this week with White House chief of staff John Kelly, possibly to undermine his ability to speak directly with President Trump about WikiLeaks. The Republican congressman from California spoke with Kelly on Wednesday regarding his recent meeting with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in London, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday evening, and broached a possible trade. 10 Social-Media Marketing Strategies for Companies Watch Full Screen Rohrabacher reportedly used the word "deal" in his conversation with Kelly and said Assange would get a pardon or "something like that" in exchange for...

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) met with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly this week about a potential deal with Julian Assange on the Wikileaks Podesta documents. Assange has repeatedly said Russia is not linked to the leak of thousands of John Podesta emails before the election. Julian Assange reportedly told Rohrabacher he is ready to provide information that Russia did not hack the DNC. Last month Rep. Rohrabacher told Sean Hannity he was 99% certain that the Russian collusion narrative is a total lie. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller – who is investigating whether President Trump colluded with Russia during...