Trump Jr.'s Messages to WikiLeaks Leaked

He responded to organization 3 times
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 14, 2017 6:03 AM CST
Trump Jr.'s Messages to WikiLeaks Leaked
This image of Donald Trump Jr.'s Twitter account shows a series of direct messages he received from the Twitter account behind the WikiLeaks website, including his responses to the communications, which he posted on Monday, Nov. 13, 2017.   (Donald Trump Jr.'s Twitter account via AP)

Donald Trump Jr. privately communicated with WikiLeaks on Twitter before and after last year's election, receiving requests that ran from the reasonable to making Julian Assange ambassador to Australia. Trump Jr. released the exchanges on Twitter on Monday night after they were leaked to the Atlantic, which reported that Trump Jr.'s lawyers had given them to congressional investigators. Trump Jr. said he only responded to WikiLeaks a "whopping" three times, including on Sept. 20, 2016, when WikiLeaks asked him about the political action committee behind an anti-Trump site. "Off the record I don't know who that is, but I’ll ask around," he told the organization.

On Oct. 12, 2016—two days after then-candidate Donald Trump declared "I love WikiLeaks"—WikiLeaks messaged Trump Jr., urging him to get his father to tweet a link to a tool to search emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the Guardian reports. Trump Jr. tweeted the link himself two days later. In later emails, which Trump Jr. did not reply to, WikiLeaks tried to convince him to turn over his father's tax returns. On Election Day, WikiLeaks suggested to Trump Jr. that if his father lost, he should refuse to concede and declare the election rigged. Democrats called for more information from Trump Jr. after the WikiLeaks leak Monday, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal saying, "there seems to be no reasonable explanation for these messages," the AP reports.

(More WikiLeaks stories.)

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