Rohrabacher also had considerable influence on Capitol Hill as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and emerging threats. Upon returning to Washington, D.C., from his Moscow trip in April 2016, Rohrabacher circulated the memo he had obtained and tried to organize a screening of a film that attacked Browder and the Magnitsky Act, according to
The Daily Beast. He also tried to get Russia’s deputy general prosecutor, Victor Grin, removed from the U.S. sanctions list in 2016—a move that prompted Browder
to file a complaint with the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Rohrabacher testified before the House Intelligence Committee last year about his communications with Assange and with Russian nationals during the 2016 election, but Republicans have declined to make Rohrabacher’s transcript public. That could change by early next year. Democratic Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, who sits on the committee, told me last month that while Rohrabacher’s testimony did not contain “a missing link to understanding the Russia investigation,” there were some “wild and woolly moments” that the American public could benefit from reading. “When something is hidden,” Himes said, “it understandably raises questions.”