Donald Trump Jr communicated with WikiLeaks during final stages of election

Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of the US president, was in direct communication with WikiLeaks in the crucial final stages of the 2016 presidential election, a new leak of private correspondence from inside the Trump circle reveals.

The younger Trump exchanged direct messages with the WikiLeaks account on Twitter between 20 September and 12 October 2016. Copies of the correspondence were handed to congressional investigators by Trump Jr’s lawyers and subsequently obtained by the Atlantic magazine.

The communication occurred at a highly sensitive moment for both the Trump presidential campaign and for WikiLeaks, just weeks before election day and at the height of WikiLeaks’ publication of hacked emails belonging to senior Democratic figures at the instigation, US intelligence agencies allege, of the Russian government.

The most politically explosive communication between the two parties, according to the Atlantic, came on and after 12 October 2016.

“Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications,” the WikiLeaks account, @WikiLeaks, said to Trump Jr two days after his father had proclaimed at a campaign rally: “I love WikiLeaks!”

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us. There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” the message continued.

The message went on to offer a link to wlsearch.tk – a search tool that facilitates the exploration of the database of leaked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, that WikiLeaks had by then begun to publish.

Julia Ioffe, author of the Atlantic article, writes that Trump Jr did not reply to the WikiLeaks message. But two days later, on 14 October, he did tweet that same link to wlsearch.tk, encouraging “those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy” exposed by the WikiLeaks emails.

The Guardian contacted WikiLeaks, which referred to a Twitter post by the group’s founder, Julian Assange; he suggested that the Atlantic had selectively edited the messages.