WikiLeaks-Trump timeline

Tuesday 31 July 2018

I put together a short timeline comparing WikiLeaks' public statements on Trump with its leaked private comments on him. Useful for anybody trying to keep track of all the duplicity that's going on:

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Privately, 19 Nov 2015: WikiLeaks says "we believe it would be much better for GOP to win." Calls Clinton a "well connected, sadistic sociopath." (Source: copy of DMs - via The Intercept. Note: I personally verified the authenticity of these DMs.)

Publicly, 26 Aug 2016: Assange appears on Fox & Friends and says "We do have some information about the Republican campaign" but suggests he won't publish it because "it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day." (The material is never disclosed.)

Privately, 20 Sept 2016: WikiLeaks sends Donald J Trump Jr a password to an anti-Trump website which it claims to have "guessed." (Source: Twitter DMs - copies released by Donald J Trump Jr.)

Privately, 3 Oct 2016: WikiLeaks asks Donald J Trump Jr to "push" a dubiously sourced story from a conservative website called "True Pundit" alleging Hillary Clinton wanted to kill Assange with a drone. (Source: Twitter DMs - copies released by Donald J Trump Jr.)

Publicly, 7 Oct 2016: The Washington Post, at about 4pm US Eastern Time, publishes a now infamous video recording in which Donald Trump can be heard boasting about grabbing women's genitals. Within an hour, WikiLeaks publishes an email leak from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta. (Source: Politifact.)

Privately, 21 Oct 2016: WikiLeaks asks Trump Jr to let it publish copies of his father Donald Trump's tax returns because it says doing so would "dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality" & get "much higher impact" for "the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing about Clinton." (Source: Twitter DMs - copies released by Donald J Trump Jr.)

Privately, 8 Nov 2016 (day of the election, before results announced): WikiLeaks advises Donald J Trump Jr that Donald Trump shouldn't concede the election if he loses & instead should blame "rigging" and "media corruption" to "keep his base alive." (Source: Twitter DMs - copies released by Donald J Trump Jr.)

Publicly, 10 Nov 2016 (after Trump election victory announced): WikiLeaks claims in a Reddit AMA that "allegations that we have colluded with Trump, or any other candidate for that matter...are just groundless and false." (Source: Reddit.)

Publicly, 10 Nov 2016: WikiLeaks claims in a Reddit AMA that "we were not publishing with a goal to get any specific candidate elected." Claims it did not "editorially back one candidate over another." (Source: Reddit.)

Publicly, 10 Nov 2016: WikiLeaks says in a Reddit AMA that it has "not received information on Donald Trump’s campaign." (Three months earlier, on 26 Aug 2016, Assange said "We do have some information about the Republican campaign" - see above.) (Source: Reddit.)

Privately, 16 Dec 2016: WikiLeaks asks Donald J Trump Jr to get Donald Trump to pressure Australia to "appoint Assange ambassador to DC" because he is a "really smart tough guy." (Source: Twitter DMs - copies released by Donald J Trump Jr.)

Publicly, 14 Jan 2017: WikiLeaks denies Assange is trying to endear himself to Trump, claims it's just "using Trump aligned media to amplify its publications and critiques of secrecy and war." (Source: Twitter.)

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(The Donald J Trump Jr private messages were first disclosed in Nov 2017; the original source material can be found in three parts, here, here, and here. The other referenced private messages were first disclosed in Feb 2018 by my colleagues at The Intercept - the full archive of 11,000 private messages were released this week by activist Emma Best and can be found here. This is only a partial analysis; it is not comprehensive. There's a lot more information out there. I may add to this timeline once I have reviewed other material.)