Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of the United States president, was in touch with WikiLeaks during last year’s election campaign, screenshots of messages tweeted by Trump Jr himself showed on Tuesday. WikiLeaks is an anti-secrecy group that publishes secret information shared by anonymous sources.
Earlier, The Atlantic had published a report about the correspondence, which was leaked to the magazine after Trump Jr’s lawyers handed over the messages to investigators looking into Russia’s alleged role during the 2016 election. Trump Jr then posted the transcript of the entire conversation, which began with a direct message by WikiLeaks on Twitter on September 20, 2016.
Though Trump Jr responded rarely in the thread, his tweet history shows he acted on one of the messages sent by WikiLeaks. In one message, WikiLeaks had asked Trump Jr to share a link to leaked emails from the rival Democratic Party’s campaign. Two days later, Trump Jr tweeted the link, urging “those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy” exposed by WikiLeaks.
At one point, WikiLeaks also asked Trump Jr to leak his father’s tax returns to the website, so that WikiLeaks could shed its image of being pro-Russia and pro-Trump during the election campaign. Donald Trump’s unclear tax returns were a key election issue ahead of the presidential poll.
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