WikiLeaks tried to have Julian Assange installed as the Australian ambassador to the US after Donald Trump’s election, a new leak of private correspondence from inside the Trump circle has revealed.

On Tuesday the Atlantic magazine reported Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, was in contact with WikiLeaks via Twitter direct messages during the final stages of the 2016 election. Copies of the correspondence were handed to congressional investigators by Trump Jr’s lawyers and then obtained by the Atlantic.

Trump Jr subsequently tweeted a transcript of what he said was the entire exchange.

Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) 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

It reveals WikiLeaks and Trump Jr sought information from each another and details a string of increasingly bold suggestions made by WikiLeaks to Trump Jr, including asking for the president-elect to tell Australia to appoint Assange ambassador to the US.

On 16 December, a month after Trump’s election, WikiLeaks asked Trump Jr to have his father “suggest” Australia appoint Assange to the post in Washington, DC.

Donald Trump Jr communicated with WikiLeaks during final stages of election Read more

“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 Assange ambassador to DC.”



WikiLeaks went as far as suggesting wording for Trump: “‘That’s ‘a real smart tough guy and the most famous australian [sic] you have!’ or something similar,” WikiLeaks wrote.

“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 detailing 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 only months before the election, at the height of WikiLeaks’ publication of hacked emails belonging to senior Democratic figures.

US intelligence agencies allege the leaks came from the Russian government, which Assange has denied.

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

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 he believed might have damaging information on the Clinton campaign.

Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange) 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

Assange said 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.”

Profile Donald Trump Jr Show Hide Born 31 December 1977 in Manhattan 31 December 1977 in Manhattan Career After brief stint bartending in Aspen, he moved back to New York to join the Trump Organization, supervising Trump Park Avenue and other projects. He took an interest in other family enterprises in later years, appearing as a guest adviser on his father’s reality television show The Apprentice and as a judge of various Miss USA pageants. After brief stint bartending in Aspen, he moved back to New York to join the Trump Organization, supervising Trump Park Avenue and other projects. He took an interest in other family enterprises in later years, appearing as a guest adviser on his father’s reality television show The Apprentice and as a judge of various Miss USA pageants. High point Just before the news of his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, he was riding high as executive director of The Trump Organization and one of the president’s closest confidants. Just before the news of his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, he was riding high as executive director of The Trump Organization and one of the president’s closest confidants. Low point On Tuesday 11 July 2017, he produced the most damning evidence yet in the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, catapulting himself on to the international stage with emails showing he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have “dirt” on his father’s rival. On Tuesday 11 July 2017, he produced the most damning evidence yet in the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, catapulting himself on to the international stage with emails showing he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have “dirt” on his father’s rival. He says “I think I probably got a lot of my father’s natural security, or ego, or whatever … I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways – I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business – but I think I’m such a different person, it’s hard to even compare us. His work persona is kind of what he is. I have a work face, and then there’s my private life,” – Trump Jr to New York magazine, 2004. “I think I probably got a lot of my father’s natural security, or ego, or whatever … I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways – I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business – but I think I’m such a different person, it’s hard to even compare us. His work persona is kind of what he is. I have a work face, and then there’s my private life,” – Trump Jr to New York magazine, 2004. They say “It’s a do-anything-you-can-to-win world that he’s part of, and his eagerness to meet with this lawyer, who was very explicitly described as having information that came from Russian government sources – there’s no mystery there. There’s no veil. There’s not even one veil. Her name wasn’t mentioned but everything else was very explicit and he leaps at it. That’s all part of this all-that-matters-is-winning, there’s winning and there’s losing, that’s it. That’s the value system and in that way, he very much echoes his father.” – Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer, to the Guardian, 12 July 2017. “It’s a do-anything-you-can-to-win world that he’s part of, and his eagerness to meet with this lawyer, who was very explicitly described as having information that came from Russian government sources – there’s no mystery there. There’s no veil. There’s not even one veil. Her name wasn’t mentioned but everything else was very explicit and he leaps at it. That’s all part of this all-that-matters-is-winning, there’s winning and there’s losing, that’s it. That’s the value system and in that way, he very much echoes his father.” – Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer, to the Guardian, 12 July 2017.

Assange has had a rocky relationship with the Australian government. In 2010 the former prime minister Julia Gillard described the release by WikiLeaks of classified documents from the US State Department as “illegal”, and after he was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 Australia was accused of “abandoning” him.

Last year the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, met Assange’s lawyers after a United Nations report found Assange had been “arbitrarily detained” since his arrest in 2010.

