WASHINGTON – After the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) blasted Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) for reportedly “welcoming Charles Johnson to a meeting,” the California lawmaker penned a letter to the ADL where he “welcomed support” from the known Holocaust denier on areas of mutual agreement. Johnson has previously claimed that the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz and gas chambers were “not real” while adding, “I do not and never have believed the six million figure.”

Rohrabacher opposes Johnson’s attitudes towards Nazi Germany. At the same time, the California lawmaker said that Johnson “agrees with me on other very significant issues. I welcome his support on those issues of agreement and oppose those ideas on which we disagree.” While Rohrabacher strongly condemned Hitler’s genocidal crimes during the Holocaust, the California lawmaker emphasized, “I hope to have a positive influence on him (Johnson).”

A member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the 70-year old Congressman is perhaps best known for his affinity towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. The New York Times reported in May that the F.B.I. warned Rohrabacher that Russian spies were trying to recruit him as an “agent of influence,” someone Moscow believed could steer U.S. policy in line with the Putin-led regime.  

Rohrabacher asserted that Johnson arrived at the October 5 Capitol Hill meeting uninvited but “was allowed to sit in, only in the sense that no one said no and told him to go.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt noted in an October 19 statement, “It is an insult to the memories of those killed in the Holocaust, to the Jewish community, and to U.S. soldiers who fought to defeat Nazism to invite a Holocaust denier to the halls of Congress.”

After receiving the California lawmaker’s letter, an ADL spokesman noted, “In the future, we hope that Rep. Rohrabacher will play a role to help ensure that Johnson, or anyone similarly associated with Holocaust denial, is excluded from future meetings with members of Congress on Capitol Hill.”

Response Letter to Anti-Defamation League by Jacob Kornbluh on Scribd