Assange: I Asked Trump Jr. To Publish Russia Meeting Emails With WikiLeaks

FILE - This is a Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 file photo of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he pauses as he makes a statement to media gathered outside the High Court in London. You've read his leaks. Now watch his show.... FILE - This is a Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 file photo of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he pauses as he makes a statement to media gathered outside the High Court in London. You've read his leaks. Now watch his show. International secret-buster Julian Assange said Tuesday Jan. 24, 2012 he's launching his very own television series. The guests haven't been disclosed, but the 40-year-old Australian has promised to give viewers more of what he's been supplying for years: Controversy. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File) MORE LESS
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Julian Assange on Tuesday claimed that he’d asked Donald Trump, Jr. to use WikiLeaks to publicly release emails detailing his efforts to obtain information about Hillary Clinton provided by the Russian government shortly before the President’s eldest son posted them on Twitter.

“Contacted Trump Jr this morning on why he should publish his emails (i.e with us). Two hours later, does it himself,” the WikiLeaks founder wrote on Twitter.

Trump Jr. published the stunning exchange with family acquaintance Rob Goldstone on his own Twitter account after the New York Times notified him that it had obtained the emails by requesting comment. The emails recount Goldstone’s efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump Jr. and a “Russian government attorney” who Goldstone said possessed “ultra sensitive” information about Clinton obtained as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Though Trump Jr. had until Tuesday withheld crucial information about his meeting with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, he wrote that he published the exchange “in order to be totally transparent.”

Assange said that in his pitch for Trump Jr. to release the email chain through WikiLeaks, he told the President’s son that his “enemies” would “milk isolated phrases” in the emails “with their own context, spin and according to their own strategic timetable.”

He also suggested that Trump Jr. could be in more hot water legally if he self-published the emails instead of releasing them anonymously through a third party:

WikiLeaks published thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel’s office is investigating whether the radical transparency site worked with Russian hackers to obtain and leak those messages.

Trump repeatedly professed his “love” for WikiLeaks during the campaign, celebrating the embarrassment the release of the DNC and Podesta emails caused the Clinton team.

Assange has spent the past five years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He faces ongoing legal ramifications from a sexual assault case in Sweden that was recently dropped, and from publishing U.S. government documents on the site.

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Notable Replies

  1. Pics or it doesn’t exist Mr. Assange.

  2. So the rapist fugitive hacker told the serial groper’s son what to do?

    Sounds about right…

  3. WTF? How long have these two been in contact? Since June 9 2016?

  4. Avatar for ghost ghost says:

    Oh, poor Guy. What’s the matter, Julian, feeling left out?

  5. Col. Putin: “Mr. Assange, are you free?”

    Mr. Assange: “I’m free!”

    (Apologies to Grace Bros.)

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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