Washington, Nov 14 (AFP) President Donald Trump's son hasreleased a series of messages he had with WikiLeaks after areport suggested he had secretly liaised with the group thatpublished Hillary Clinton's emails during last year'selection.
Donald Trump, Jr revealed what he said was the "entire"chain of Twitter direct messages with WikiLeaks betweenSeptember 2016 and July this year, in which the anti-secrecygroup sought to feed information to the Trump campaign andenhance the impact of its Clinton releases.
Trump Jr's release, also done on Twitter, shows about adozen messages from WikiLeaks to him, and what he called "mywhopping 3 responses."WikiLeaks is shown informing Trump Jr of a new anti-Trumpwebsite, urging his father to tweet about WikiLeaks's Clintonfiles and advising that, if he loses the election, Trumpshould challenge the result.
The group also asks Trump Jr to provide his father's taxreturns because "it will dramatically improve the perceptionof out impartiality" while boosting the impact of its Clintonmaterials.
And in April, WikiLeaks suggested Trump Jr hand overemails regarding a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer thathas become a focus of the federal investigation into possiblecollusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Trump Jr only replied to three early messages, thankingWikiLeaks for the information on the new website, making aslighting comment about Clinton, and, on October 3 last year,just before WikiLeaks published a trove of files on Clinton,asking "What's behind this Wednesday leak I keep readingabout?"Trump Jr clearly sought to downplay Atlantic magazine'sarticle earlier in the day that first made the messagespublic.
Although the exchanges were mostly one-sided and mostlyignored by Trump Jr, the president's son did not push backagainst the website even though it had already released datathat benefited Russian interests.
In his own tweets, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange saidthe group's messages were all part of its promotional efforts.
"WikiLeaks can be very effective at convincing evenhigh-profile people that it is their interest to promote linksto its publications," he said. (AFP)AJR.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.