The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks
The transparency
organization asked the president’s son for his cooperation—in sharing
its work, in contesting the results of the election, and in arranging
for Julian Assange to be Australia’s ambassador to the United States.
This story was updated on November 13 at 10:28 pm
Just
before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of
last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a
private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s
oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site
putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks 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?” (The
site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.)
The
next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks.
“Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote
on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”
The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were
also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators.
They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between
WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July
2017. The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization
that the American intelligence community believes
was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it
had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a
series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax
returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results
of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell
Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.
“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,” said Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Donald
Trump Jr. “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.” WikiLeaks did not
respond to requests for comment.
The
messages were turned over to Congress as part of that body’s various
ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential
campaign. American intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of
engaging in a deliberate effort to boost President Donald Trump’s
chances while bringing down his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. That
effort—and the president’s response to it—has spawned multiple
congressional investigations, and a special counsel inquiry that has led
to the indictment of Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, for
financial crimes.
It’s not clear what investigators will
make of the correspondence, which represents a small portion of the
thousands of documents Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer says he turned over to
them. The stakes for the Trump family, however, are high. Trump Jr.’s
June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with
connections to Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, is already
reportedly a subject of interest in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation, as is the White House statement defending him. (Trump Jr. was emailed an offer
of “information that would incriminate Hillary,” and responded in part,
“If it’s what you say I love it.”) The messages exchanged with
WikiLeaks add a second instance in which Trump Jr. appears eager to
obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton, despite its
provenance.
Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the
frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on
its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about
putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to
“ask around.” 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.
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!”)
“Strongly
suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went
on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help
Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find
stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re
sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw
we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”
Trump Jr. did not respond to this message. But just 15 minutes after it was sent, as The Wall Street Journal’s Byron Tau pointed out, Donald Trump himself tweeted, “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”
Two days later, on October 14, 2016, Trump Jr. tweeted
out the link WikiLeaks had provided him. “For those who have the time
to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails
are right here: http://wlsearch.tk/,” he wrote.
After this point, Trump Jr. ceased to respond to WikiLeaks’s direct messages, but WikiLeaks escalated its requests.
“Hey
Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016.
“Leak us one or more of your father’s tax returns.” WikiLeaks then laid
out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks.
One, The New York Times had already published
a fragment of Trump’s tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could
come out any time “through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC).”
It
is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that “is the real
kicker.” “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception
of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained. “That means that the vast
amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher
impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’
‘pro-Russia’ source.” It then provided an email address and link where
the Trump campaign could send the tax returns, and adds, “The same for
any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a
decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out.”
Trump Jr. did not respond to this message.
WikiLeaks
didn’t write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. “Hi Don if
your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT
conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of
rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do,” WikiLeaks
wrote at 6:35pm, when the idea that Clinton would win was still the
prevailing conventional wisdom. (As late as 7:00pm that night,
FiveThirtyEight, a trusted prognosticator of the election, gave
Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning the presidency.) WikiLeaks
insisted that contesting the election results would be good for Trump’s
rumored plans to start a media network should he lose the presidency.
“The discussion can be transformative as it exposes media corruption,
primary corruption, PAC corruption, etc.,” WikiLeaks wrote.
Shortly
after midnight that day, when it was clear that Trump had beaten all
expectations and won the presidency, WikiLeaks sent him a simple
message: “Wow.”
Trump Jr. did not respond to these
messages either, but WikiLeaks was undeterred. “Hi Don. Hope you’re
doing well!” WikiLeaks wrote on December 16 to Trump Jr., who was by
then the son of the president-elect. “In relation to Mr. Assange:
Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home
country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and
helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange
ambassador to [Washington,] DC.”
WikiLeaks even imagined
how Trump might put it: “‘That’s a real smart tough guy and the most
famous australian [sic] you have!’ or something similar,” WikiLeaks
wrote. “They won’t do it but it will send the right signals to
Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to
ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.” (On December 7, Assange,
proclaiming his innocence, had released his testimony in front of London investigators looking into accusations that he had committed alleged sexual assault.)
In
the winter and spring, WikiLeaks went largely silent, only occasionally
sending Trump Jr. links. But on July 11, 2017, three days after The New York Times broke the story
about Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a
Russian lawyer with connections to Russia’s powerful prosecutor general,
WikiLeaks got in touch again.
“Hi Don. Sorry to hear
about your problems,” WikiLeaks wrote. “We have an idea that may help a
little. We are VERY interested in confidentially obtaining and
publishing a copy of the email(s) cited in the New York Times today,”
citing a reference in the paper to emails Trump Jr had exchanged with
Rob Goldstone, a publicist who had helped set up the meeting. “We think
this is strongly in your interest,” WikiLeaks went on. It then reprised
many of the same arguments it made in trying to convince Trump Jr. to
turn over his father’s tax returns, including the argument that Trump’s
enemies in the press were using the emails to spin an unfavorable
narrative of the meeting. “Us publishing not only deprives them of this
ability but is beautifully confounding.”
The message was sent at 9:29 am on July 11. Trump Jr. did not respond, but just hours later, he posted the emails himself, on his own Twitter feed.
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
you can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club
on Facebook
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund