Trump Jr., WikiLeaks discussed stolen emails
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s oldest son on Monday released a series of direct messages he received from the Twitter account behind the WikiLeaks website, including his responses to the communications.
Donald Trump Jr.’s release of the messages on Twitter came hours after The Atlantic first reported them. In the exchanges — some of them around the time that the website was releasing stolen emails from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman — WikiLeaks asks Trump Jr. to push its leaks and to release his father’s tax returns to the site.
The documents released by Trump Jr. show him responding three times, at one point agreeing to “ask around” about a political action committee WikiLeaks had mentioned. He also asked the site about a rumour about an upcoming leak. The messages began in September 2016 and ran through July.
Trump Jr. downplayed the exchanges as he released them.
“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,” he tweeted. “How ironic!”
The direct messages had been turned over to congressional committees investigating Russian intervention in the 2016 election and if there were any links to Trump’s campaign.
Vice-President Mike Pence responded quickly to the report, issuing a statement through his press secretary that he knew nothing about it.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange tweeted after The Atlantic report that he couldn’t confirm the messages, but then defended them after Trump Jr. released them.
“WikiLeaks appears to beguile some people into transparency by convincing them that it is in their interest,” Assange tweeted.
Democrats swiftly reacted to the report, saying Trump Jr. should provide more information. California Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, says it “demonstrates once again a willingness by the highest levels of the Trump campaign to accept foreign assistance.”
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that panel should subpoena the documents and force Trump Jr. to publicly testify. Trump Jr. spoke privately to staff in March.