President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reportedly carried out a secret 10-month correspondence with WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign and in the months following. Trump’s attorneys have said they “have no concerns” about the documents.
The messages were turned over to congressional investigators and obtained by The Atlantic. While the messages were mostly one-sided by WikiLeaks, The Atlantic report said Trump Jr. did respond from time to time:
“According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from Wikileaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them Wikileaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump, Jr. rebuff Wikileaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.”
Trump Jr. received a private message from the WikiLeaks Twitter account on September 20, 2016.
“A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks reportedly wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?”
According to The Atlantic, Trump Jr. replied, “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around. Thanks.”
Wikileaks; just an impartial, non-Russian affiliated watchdog that secretly encouraged the Trump campaign to call the election rigged if he lost. You know, for journalism reasons. pic.twitter.com/5dumexEDU0
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) November 13, 2017
“Over the last several months, we have worked cooperatively with each of the committees and have voluntarily turned over thousands of documents in response to their requests,” Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Trump Jr., said in a statement. “Putting aside the question as to why or by whom such documents, provided to Congress under promises of confidentiality, have been selectively leaked, we can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum.”
According to the report, these messages are part of a long correspondence between WikiLeaks and Trump Jr., though Trump Jr. reportedly ignored many ofthe messages.
Oh my. pic.twitter.com/xZ1qGuLUdL
— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) November 13, 2017
On October 3, 2016, Wikileaks wrote again. “Hiya, it’d be great if you guys could comment on/push this story,” Wikileaks suggested, attaching a quote from then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton about wanting to “just drone” Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.
“Already did that earlier today,” Trump Jr. responded an hour-and-a-half later. “It’s amazing what she can get away with.”
Two minutes later, Trump Jr. wrote again, asking, “What’s behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?” The day before, Roger Stone, an informal advisor to Donald Trump, had tweeted, “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”
Wikileaks didn’t respond to that message, but on October 12, 2016, the account again messaged Trump Jr. “Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications,” Wikileaks wrote. (At a rally on October 10, Donald Trump had proclaimed, “I love Wikileaks!”)
On Monday night, Trump Jr tweeted out the messages that were supposedly shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017
2/3 pic.twitter.com/b1B9PBGl5t
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017
3/3 pic.twitter.com/5FdeNrbg02
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017
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5 Responses
Suprise! Surprise! Crooked Donald and the Trump Crime Family.
everyone is corrupt but guess what עם עקש תתפתל the only way to combat crooked people is with crookedness. How else can you fight crooked people!!! 100 percent!!!
Perhaps just a step or 2 away from proving they knew the wikileak info came from the Russians, that spells “COLLUSION”!
PD – Time to stop trying to defend the indefensible. Not everybody is crooked and not everyone is a menuval like Trump.
I don’t see that he did anything wrong.