The Secret Correspondence Between Fredo Trump and WikiLeaks 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.. “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. 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. Can you say collusion ! https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/
I'm not too eager to draw the connections of Russia running WL, but it's possible to shed light on being strange bedfellows with a common target to take down (Hillary and the neoliberal world order she represents), and Assange has lived in his Ecuadorian mancave for 5 years now. That isolation can drive people to desperation and insanity...
Assange stated that (if there's any room between him an WL). What a massive failure of an otherwise potentially good idea.
Pretty sad how Wikileaks were originally seen as a saviour and instead turned into one of the very same shady institutions they originally sought to destroy.
I hate wikileaks. But, I don't really see how collaborating with wikileaks is the same thing as colluding with Russia, or is a matter for reproach on its own. I find it a bit morally repugnant because I see it as an enemy of the US, but I don't quite see how coordinating with an international journalistic organization is necessarily bad from a legal/political point of view.
It was working as an arm of the Russian government at least during the 2016 election, as stated by the US intelligent agencies.
I guess it depends on how exactly you understand the relationship between Wikileaks and Russia, and how Junior understood it. In my own understanding, I'd say Wikileaks is more an ally to Russia than it is an agent of Russia, if you can appreciate the distinction. I dug up an old article I'd read on it here: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia-ties. And how did Fredo see them? It should have been pretty obvious by 09/16 that Wikileaks is antagonistic to the US, but perhaps less clear that they were actively working with and getting information from Russian spy agencies. I think it doesn't help things that we don't really have a national consensus that wikileaks and bad guys. I think this is a bit historical as liberals who opposed the Iraq war found an expedient ally in Wikileaks. Populists too probably liked the idea of the fat cat corrupt Washington elites getting exposed and knocked down a peg; maybe it'd eventually help break the oligarchy and sweep in a populist reformation (which I guess Trump is supposed to embody?). If we could have agreed long ago that foreign actors finding and publishing state secrets was unacceptable, it would make Fredo's willingness to have a conversation with them more alarming. As it stands though, I don't see how this is very galvanizing.
once lawyers are involved, not only does it prove something is problematic, it also shows a clear/serious cooperation/collusion/quid pro quo
