The media’s quest to prove Donald Trump Jr. colluded with Wikileaks is all wrong.
CNN originally reported an email from Trump Jr. was sent 10 days earlier, a factual inaccuracy that led to a false timeline and essentially, fake news. The timeline is crucial because it proves Trump Jr. was not trading unknown information, but that someone was alerting him to information already made public. Despite claims to the contrary, Trump Jr. was not aware (as far as records prove) of
From CNN’s report, which has been updated to reflect the WaPos findings:
Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.The September 14 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race.CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 — 10 days earlier — based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.After this story was published, The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email Friday afternoon and reported that the email urged Trump and his campaign to download archives that WikiLeaks had made public a day earlier. The story suggested that the individual may simply have been trying to flag the campaign to already public documents.CNN has now obtained a copy of the email, which lists September 14 as the date sent and contains a decryption key that matches what WikiLeaks had tweeted out the day before.
After obtaining the emails, the WaPo corrected the record:
A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.The email — sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 — noted that “Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC” and included a link and a “decryption key,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.The full email — which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier — indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available. CNN later corrected their story to note the email had been sent on September 14.The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powell’s inbox was available “on DCLeaks.com.” That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day.
Never let facts get in the way of a good story, amiright?
Happy Friday, indeed.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY