It's actually the second letter Rouda has written to the FBI about the congressman, who was first elected in 1988, and who's expected to face a stiffer challenge this year after his district swung to support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the presidential election. Rohrabacher's support for a strategic alliance with Russia, rare in his party, has been an open (and occasionally ridiculed) subject for years. But the Assange meeting, which Rohrabacher kept quiet until media exposure drove him to publicize it, pushed Rouda to take further action.

"Despite the fact that intelligence agencies across the globe have repeatedly and continuously asserted that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange coordinated with Russian actors in their leaks of DNC emails, and that Rohrabacher's colleagues have claimed that he is paid by Vladimir Putin, Rohrabacher took this meeting anyway," Rouda wrote in the letter.