WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s oldest son on Monday released a series of private Twitter exchanges between himself and WikiLeaks during and after the 2016 election, including pleas from the website to publicize its leaks.
Donald Trump Jr.’s release of the messages on Twitter came hours after The Atlantic first reported them. In the exchanges — some of them around the time that the website was releasing the stolen emails from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman — WikiLeaks praises his father’s positive comments about WikiLeaks and asks Trump Jr. to release his father’s tax returns to the site.
The revelations are sure to increase calls in Congress to have Trump Jr. testify publicly as part of several committee probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election. And they add a new element to the investigations that have been probing for months whether Trump’s campaign colluded in any way with the Russian government.
In an intelligence assessment released last January, the NSA, CIA and FBI concluded that Russian military intelligence provided hacked information from the DNC and “senior Democratic officials” to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has denied that Russia was the source of emails it released, including those from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
The private messages released by Trump Jr. show him responding to the WikiLeaks account three times, at one point agreeing to “ask around” about a political action committee WikiLeaks had mentioned. He also asked the site about a rumor about an upcoming leak. The messages began in September 2016 and ran through July.
Trump Jr. downplayed the exchanges as he released them.
“Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak,” he tweeted. “How ironic!“
Trump Jr.’s lawyers had released the exchanges to three congressional committees that have been investigating Russian intervention in the 2016 election and whether there were any links to Trump’s campaign.
In a statement, Trump Jr.’s lawyer said thousands of documents had been turned over to the committees.
“Putting aside the question as to why or by whom such documents, provided to Congress under promises of confidentiality, have been selectively leaked, we can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum,” said Alan Futerfas.
Futerfas didn’t say which forum he was referring to, but Trump Jr. was interviewed behind closed doors by Senate Judiciary Committee staff in September. A person familiar with that meeting said the private Twitter messages were discussed. The person declined to be identified because the transcript of that interview hasn’t been made public.
In one message dated Oct. 3, 2016, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent Trump Jr. an article that included critical comments Clinton had made about WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange and said “it’d be great if you guys could comment on/push this story.”
Trump Jr. replied: “Already did that earlier today. It’s amazing what she can get away with.”
Two minutes later, Trump Jr. sent another message: “What’s behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?“
Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone had tweeted the day before that on Wednesday, “Hillary Clinton is done,” referencing WikiLeaks.
The WikiLeaks Twitter account never responded, but days later WikiLeaks started rolling out Podesta’s stolen emails. After the emails were released, WikiLeaks sent Trump Jr. a searchable link of the emails. Trump Jr. tweeted that link two days later, on Oct. 14, 2016, The Atlantic noted.
The rest of the messages are one-sided, with WikiLeaks sending Trump Jr. messages through July 2017. They include praise for his father for mentioning them on the campaign trail, a plea to release Trump’s taxes to the site and advice on Election Day that Trump should not concede if he lost. One message suggested Trump encourage Australia to appoint Assange as US ambassador.
In July, the Twitter account messaged Trump Jr. to ask him to give the site emails surrounding a meeting he and other Trump associates held with Russians during the campaign. Trump Jr. then released them himself.
Vice President Mike Pence responded quickly to the revelations, issuing a statement through his press secretary that he knew nothing about the situation.
“The vice president was never aware of anyone associated with the campaign being in contact with WikiLeaks,” said spokeswoman Alyssa Farah. “He first learned of this news from a published report earlier tonight.”
Assange tweeted after The Atlantic report that he couldn’t confirm the messages but then defended them after Trump Jr. released them.
“WikiLeaks appears to beguile some people into transparency by convincing them that it is in their interest,” Assange tweeted.
Democrats swiftly reacted to the report, saying Trump Jr. should provide more information. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, says it “demonstrates once again a willingness by the highest levels of the Trump campaign to accept foreign assistance.”
Schiff also pointed to Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for Trump’s campaign and reached out to WikiLeaks before the election about obtaining emails related to Clinton, according to the company’s CEO.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that panel should subpoena the documents and force Trump Jr. to publicly testify.
“There seems to be no reasonable explanation for these messages,” Blumenthal said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley had said he would call Trump Jr. to publicly testify after the private interview in September. But negotiations over witnesses broke down last month amid disagreements with Democrats on the panel.
The House and Senate intelligence committees are also expecting to interview Trump Jr., but those interviews are expected to be behind closed doors.
Trump Jr. messaged with WikiLeaks during 2016 campaign
Trump Jr. messaged with WikiLeaks during 2016 campaign
In Philippine presidential palace, staffers share generations of haunted stories
- Built in 1750, Malacanang has been serving as seat of power since Spanish colonial times
- Ghost tales are so ingrained in the palace that staffers find it difficult to avoid their impact
MANILA: In Malacanang, the presidential palace of the Philippines, residents come and go usually every five years, but some are believed to have lingered for centuries, haunting its historical corridors with their mysterious presence.
Built in 1750 as a summer house for a Spanish aristocrat, the palace was acquired by the Spanish government in 1825 and served as the residence of the colonial governor-general — first of Spain and from 1898, the US. When the Philippines gained full independence in 1946, it remained its seat of power.
The building’s halls and walls have seen centuries of history and remain witnesses not only to politics but also to episodes that those who have worked there say they had to accustom themselves to: from phantom footsteps to a headless figure wearing the barong — the traditional Filipino shirt — complaining voices, or a waiter reporting for work long after his death.
Ignacio Bunye, press secretary during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, told Arab News that some officials, including Eduardo Ermita — executive secretary of the Philippines from 2004 to 2010 — took it seriously.
“In Secretary Ermita’s office, you’ll see so many medallions and little images of the Virgin Mary pasted on the windows. He even had his office blessed every now and then. Word is there’s a lot of strange apparitions in his office,” Bunye said.
“There are also stories about the sound of chains — clinking or being dragged. They hear those in other offices.”
Ghost tales are so ingrained in the palace environment that it is difficult to avoid their impact.
One evening, when Bunye stopped by his office after a palace dinner, he heard footsteps outside and then someone tried to turn his room’s doorknob.
“Fortunately, the door had automatically locked when I came in. I felt my hair stand on end. After a while, the footsteps moved away,” he said.
Once everything was quiet, he hurried out of the room and in the hallway saw a white-haired man in a suit, who slowly turned toward him and in a raspy voice, asked: “How do I get out of here?”
The person turned out to be his colleague.
“I sighed in relief. It was Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales,” Bunye said. “He had only been appointed to the Cabinet a week earlier and still didn’t know his way around the palace.”
But others who recall scary sightings have found no rational explanation. A documentary film released by Malacanang for last year’s Halloween had some of them share their stories.
Sgt. Ramson Gordo, a member of the Presidential Security Group, was on night duty when he noticed something odd in the main lobby. He saw three guards wearing the barong, while he knew there could be only two. When he approached the lobby and asked about the third man, he was told there were only two of them.
“There’s also a story of someone who took a photo of the palace’s main lobby. That was also nighttime and there was no one in there,” Gordo said. “When he looked at the picture, there was a person wearing a barong, but with no head.”
Riza Mulet, who usually arrives at work at 6:30 a.m., recounts seeing a man greeting her in the morning.
“He wasn’t familiar to me, but he said, ‘Good morning,’ so I greeted him back … I turned to look at him, but suddenly, he was gone,” she said.
When she told her colleagues that a tall man with a smiling face who looked like a waiter had greeted her and she asked if they knew him, they went silent and told her he had died during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her second sighting was during a tour of the palace. She saw a man standing beside two antique chairs that had been used by former presidents.
“We were joking, teasing, saying ‘We will sit on them’. Then he got angry, really angry … I made the mistake of looking him in the eyes, so I just bowed my head because he came closer to me. My hands turned cold, and my hair stood on end,” Mulet said.
Her colleagues pulled her away from the place — not all of them aware of what had happened.
“You have to learn to coexist with those who can’t be seen by most people. I can see them, but not everyone can,” she said.
“You have to learn to live with them.”
