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 are real. Donald Trump Jr. turned them over to the authorities as part of the Russia investigation.
And in fact, Donald Jr. actually used the information on the Podesta emails he got from 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 two days later, on October 14, 2016, he 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.
This reinforces what was already informally known: that Wikileaks and Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to help Donald Trump.
By the way: Donald Trump Jr. getting that type of info from a foreign agent could definitely land him in a lot of trouble.
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