During an MSNBC interview on Tuesday, former Trump campaign and Trump administration official Omarosa Manigault-Newman claimed Donald Trump knew WikiLeaks was in possession of hacked emails during the 2016 campaign — before those emails were published.

In response to a question about if Trump had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ activities, Omarosa replied, “Absolutely.”

“He knew what was coming out before WikiLeaks released them?” host Katy Tur followed up.

“Yes,” Omarosa replied, though she did not provide any evidence to support her claim.

“I think that he should come clean with the American people,” Omarosa added. “I think he should be honest about what he did during the campaign and what he continued to do in the White House.”

Omarosa said she’s been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is currently investigating the Trump campaign for possible collusion with Russia to sway the 2016 election.


Emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign were the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign-closing message. As ThinkProgress detailed shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks at least 164 times during the month leading up to the election — but claimed afterward that doing so didn’t impact a single voter.

In her new book, Omarosa claims that Trump campaign officials were instructed to bring up the hacked emails that were published by WikiLeaks whenever they could during the closing weeks of the campaign.

Trump’s own intelligence chiefs have accused WikiLeaks of serving as a cutout for Russian intelligence services. In July, Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officials with the hacks that resulted in WikiLeaks being in possession of the emails Trump relentlessly exploited in the campaign’s final weeks.

While no evidence has yet emerged that Trump himself coordinated with WikiLeaks, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone was in direct contact with a Twitter account used by Russian hackers during the campaign, and a March court filing indicated campaign official Rick Gates was “directly communicating” with a “Person A” whom Gates identified to associates as “a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the GRU.”


Trump publicly encouraged Russian hackers during a July 2016 news conference — a month after a number of public reports first linked Russia with the hacking of Democratic targets — and Mueller’s latest indictment indicates hackers responded to his encouragement with attempted hacks of the Clinton campaign. There are also indications Trump knew in advance about his campaign’s efforts to collude with Russia.

While Omarosa is not necessarily the most credible source — to mention just one example, despite a mountain of evidence going back decades, she recently she didn’t accept that Trump is racist until she heard a tape of him literally using the N-word — she has already exposed a Trump official as a liar once this week.

During a Fox News appearance on Monday night, Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson flatly denied taking part in an October 2016 call with other top Trump campaign officials in which they strategized about how to spin a recording of Trump saying the N-word on the set of The Apprentice.

But Omarosa had receipts. Hours after Pierson denied that such a call ever happened, CBS played a recording that Omarosa says is secretly recorded tape of the October 2016 call — a tape that confirms Omarosa’s account of what happened.