At a campaign stop in Ohio in November 2016, Trump told his supporters to read the latest disclosures from WikiLeaks. As WikiLeaks released Democratic Party emails in 2016, members of Trump’s campaign were in contact with the group. On the same day Trump told supporters in Florida to read WikiLeaks, the group urged Donald Trump Jr. to promote its cache of stolen emails, sending him a link to it in a private Twitter message, according to correspondence Trump Jr. later disclosed. The most direct contact between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks appears to have run through Roger Stone, a GOP operative and longtime Trump friend. He argued WikiLeaks wasn’t engaged in traditional journalism, signaling that the Trump administration might be ready to take up a constitutional debate.

Source: Washington Post April 11, 2019 21:09 UTC