John Moore/Getty Images
Donald Trump Jr.
“An anti-Trump campaign is about to be launched through the PAC, putintrump. org,” Wikileaks wrote, according to a series of personal messages received through The Atlantic and published on Monday.
“The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC,” WikiLeaks continued. “We guessed the password. It’s ‘fuckintrump’. See “Toto to find out who all this is. ” Any comments? »
Trump Jr. responded, “Unofficially, I don’t know who it is, I’ll ask around. “THANK YOU.
Trump Jr. then passed along WikiLeaks’ message to high-level campaign officials, including his brother-in-law and senior campaign adviser Jared Kushner; campaign manager Kellyanne Conway; digital director Brad Parscale; and senior strategist Steve Bannon, a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russia’s election interference told The Atlantic. Kushner forwarded the email to the campaign’s communications director, Hope Hicks.
Trump Jr. is under special counsel from Robert Mueller, according to NBC. Kushner reportedly passed documents to Mueller and Hope Hicks is expected to meet with Mueller’s team later this month.
Trump has often praised WikiLeaks’ quest to release emails that were stolen from the Democratic National Committee through Russian-linked hackers.
On October 10, Trump to a crowd of supporters: “I love WikiLeaks!
Two days later, WikiLeaks sent a personal message to Trump Jr. on Twitter: “Hi Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our posts. “
Trump Jr.’s lawyer did not dispute the accuracy of the private messages.
“Leaving aside the question of why or through whom such documents, provided to Congress under a promise of confidentiality, were selectively disclosed, we can confidently state that we have no consideration related to those documents and that all questions raised about them were formulated without issue. Back in the right forum, he told The Atlantic.
But the revelation that Trump Jr. told other high-level members of the campaign about WikiLeaks’ first message raises questions about whether there was any high-level coordination between WikiLeaks and the campaign.
The correspondence began about two weeks before WikiLeaks published emails stolen from crusader Clinton President John Podesta, which Trump Jr. sold on his Twitter account (two days after WikiLeaks asked him to do so, according to The Atlantic).
The US intelligence network concluded in January that Russia used WikiLeaks as a tool to interfere in the election. In April, CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a “hostile, non-state intelligence service, instigated through state actors like Russia. ” He added that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was “a fraud” and “a coward. ”
WikiLeaks’ outreach came on the heels of two other meetings between members of the campaign and Russia-linked officials.
Trump Jr. , Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer on June 9 with a promise to obtain negative information about Hillary Clinton. Another young member of the crusade, George Papadopoulos, met in London last April with a Russia-linked professor who told him that the Kremlin had “filth” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails. “
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
POPULAR CATEGORIES