Super thirsty WikiLeaks slid into Donald Trump Jr.'s DMs
WikiLeaks messaged Donald Trump Jr. throughout the 2016 election and beyond -- and often, even if the president's eldest son rarely responded.
The Atlantic found the organization was sending direct messages to Trump Jr.'s Twitter account for 10 months, up until July 2017. Writer Julia Ioffe discovered them after the messages were turned over to Congress as part of the investigations into Russian involvement in the election.
And, yeah, they make WikiLeaks seem pretty desperate.
The messages asked Trump Jr. to publicly share stories and information. At one point, the organization asked for Trump's tax returns.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tweeted after The Atlantic's story published that he could not confirm the online conversations.
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Later Monday, Trump Jr. posted the DM conversation, showing he only responded three times.
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Trump Jr. might not have responded often (although he did a few times in the beginning), but he tweeted and shared some of what WikiLeaks was feeding him, including a link to the trove of emails that he was sent in a DM from WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks used very familiar language with Trump Jr. In one DM it wrote, in part, "Hiya, it’d be great if you guys could comment on/push this story."
And it seems the WikiLeaks info made its way up to Donald Trump occasionally. This tweet was sent 15 minutes after his son got a DM from WikiLeaks in October 2016.
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Looking at his other tweets, Trump Jr. tweeted about WikiLeaks a lot during October 2016 with stories mainly about Hillary Clinton campaign leaks.
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Requests from WikiLeaks kept coming in after the election. Like this one in December to make Assange the Australian ambassador to the United States.
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After the Atlantic report was released, Trump Jr.'s camp put out a statement saying it had "no concerns" about the leaked documents.
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Trump himself tweeted about WikiLeaks 14 times from July 2016 up until his election. Like his son, he cited the leaked Clinton emails often.
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What this really reveals is that Trump Jr. checks his DMs and has totally seen those Seth Rogen messages.
UPDATE Nov. 13, 5:07 p.m. PT: Donald Trump Jr.'s response and screenshots of his direct messages with WikiLeaks have been added to the story.
Topics Cybersecurity Elections Politics
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
