On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone tried to solicit information about Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in September 2016. At the time, the Journal reported, Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio host who had interviewed Assange, and asked Credico to ask Assange for “any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30, 2011.”
Like Stone, Trump seemed to believe that damaging information about Clinton could be found in the emails that she sent using her private email server, and later deleted. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a press conference in July 2016.
Stone and Trump were not alone in seeking help from WikiLeaks and Russia during the election. One of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., asked WikiLeaks via a private Twitter message in October whether a “leak” was coming and what it was about. Trump Jr. also attended a meeting at Trump Tower, along with Trump’s campaign chairman and son-in-law, after a suggestion that he’d be able to see incriminating information on Clinton from Russia’s “crown prosecutor.”
Time and time again, Trump and his associates seemed to demonstrate a willingness to accept help from WikiLeaks—an organization the former CIA Director Mike Pompeo described as a “hostile intelligence service”—and from Russia, which was actively trying to influence the election, intelligence officials warned Trump in August 2016. Here’s a brief timeline of the interactions, or attempted interactions, that have led to this moment: