Yesterday, an attorney for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in court that his client was offered a presidential pardon in exchange for Russia testimony. Former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has now essentially confirmed those allegations.

“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,” Rohrabacher said to Yahoo News. “He knew I could get to the president.”

Rohrabacher had a three-hour meeting with Assange in August 2017 while he was holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain. Rohrabacher was hoping to gather proof that Seth Rich, a former DNC staffer murdered in 2016 who many now put on the Clinton kill count, or another individual leaked the information to WikiLeaks. The deep state claims the Russians were behind it.

He made it clear that he only requested “truthful” information from Assange, and in no way meant to coerce him to produce a “lie.” Rohrabacher talked to former White House chief of staff John Kelly after the fact about the meeting, whom he said was “courteous” but ultimately brushed him off.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who worked for the First Lady when this took place, is vehemently denying the allegations.

“The President barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman,” she said in a statement. “He’s never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject. It is a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.”

Right now, Assange is facing 18 felony charges, including 17 under the Espionage Act, for allegedly helping former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning hack information exposing deep state crimes and other illicit activities in 2010.

“Chelsea Manning’s plea and mitigation to the military commission has key passages which we will be relying on so we would seek to extract that and key press reports so the court has key materials,” said Assange’s attorney Edward Fitzgerald, who is arguing that Britain should not extradite his client back to the United States, during a preliminary court appearance this week.

“What we say is it is an abuse to seek extradition for a political offense so that is really part of the abuse argument,” he added.

Assange has repeatedly said on the record that Russia did not give him the information that his organization leaked from the DNC.

“Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That’s false. We can say that the Russian government is not the source,” Assange said in Nov. 2016 in an interview with an Australian broadcaster.

“Well, the reason is obvious. They’re trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House. They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate President,” Assange told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview, explaining the genesis of the Russia lie.

“We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,” Assange told Hannity.

A pardon of Assange would be a devastating blow to the deep state, which has been battling to overthrow President Trump since his election.