Secret Twitter correspondence between Donald Trump Jr and Wikileaks released

Wikileaks attempted to have Julian Assange placed as Australian ambassador to the US, following Donald Trump’s election, a new leak has revealed.

On Tuesday, the Atlantic magazine reported that Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son, was in contact with Wikileaks via Twitter direct messages, during the final stages of the 2016 presidential election.

Copies of their correspondence were handed to congressional investigators by Trump Jr’s lawyers and then subsequently obtained by the Atlantic.

Jr then tweeted a transcript of what he claimed was the entire conversation.

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. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017

The tweet reveals that Wikileaks and Trump Jr were after information and details a string of bold suggestions made by Wikileaks to Jr, including asking for the president-elect to tell Australia to appoint Assange ambassador to the US.

On 16 December, just a month following the presidential election, Wikileaks asked Jr to have Donald Trump “suggest” that Australia appoint Assange to the post in Washington, DC.

“Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well!” Wikileaks wrote to Trump Jr.

“In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint ambassador to DC”.

Wikileaks even suggested the wording:

“That’s a ‘real smart tough guy and the most famous Australian [sic] you have!’ or something similar”, wrote Wikileaks.

 “They won’t do it but it will send the right signals to Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.”

Wikileaks also encouraged Trump Jr to leak his father’s tax returns to prevent them being published by a “biased source” such as the New York Times.

“If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained.

It also urged the Trump campaign to reject the results of the election as rigged, and in July told the president’s son to release emails, which detailed his contact with Russian figures during the campaign.

While most of the communication was one-sided, the exchanges between Trump Jr and Wikileaks came at a highly sensitive moment.

They took place just months before the election, at the height of WikiLeaks’ publication of hacked emails belonging to senior Democratic figures.

According to US intelligence agencies, the leaks came from the Russian government, with Assange has denied.

On Twitter, Assange said that he “cannot confirm the alleged DM’s” and said the Atlantic story was “edited and clearly does not have the full context”.

I cannot confirm the alleged DM's from @DonaldJTrumpJr to @WikiLeaks. @WikiLeaks does not keep such records and the Atlantic's presentation is edited and clearly does not have the full context. However, even those published by the Atlantic show that: 1/

— Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange) November 13, 2017

However he also pointed to a tweet from his own account in July in which he said he had contacted Trump Jr to urge him to release emails relating to Trump Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, which he believed might have some damaging information on the Hilary Clinton campaign.

Contacted Trump Jr this morning on why he should publish his emails (i.e with us). Two hours later, does it himself: https://t.co/FzCttGSyr6

— Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange) July 11, 2017

According to Assange, the messages showed that “WikiLeaks loves its pending publications and ignores those who ask for details”.

 “Trump Jr. was rebuffed just like Cambridge Analytica. In both cases WikiLeaks had publicly teased the publications,” he wrote.

“Thousands of people asked about them. WikiLeaks can be very effective at convincing even high profile people that it is their interest to promote links to its publications.

“WikiLeaks has such chutzpah that it allegedly tried to convince Trump Jr to leak his father’s tax returns & his own ‘Russian lawyer meeting’ emails (he did). WikiLeaks appears to beguile some people into transparency by convincing them that it is in their interest.”

In 2010, the former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard described the release by Wikileaks of classified documents from the US state department as “illegal”. Also, after Assange was granted asylum in 2012, Australia was accused of “abandoning” him.