An email sent to President Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr before the 2016 election included a decryption key for hacked documents that the website WikiLeaks had already made public a day earlier.
The email obtained by The Associated Press on Friday disputes an earlier news report by CNN that Trump and his eldest son had received the information before the hacked data had been made public. In fact, the email was sent to Trump and his son on September 14, 2016, the day after WikiLeaks had released the documents publicly on its website and Twitter account. CNN later corrected its report.
The email message was also sent to members of the Trump campaign and Trump's company, including lawyer Michael Cohen and an email address once used by Hope Hicks, a campaign communications aide who is now a senior aide in the White House.
"I hope this information help (sic) you," the email said, with the writer noting that the "huge" archive of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee was 678 megabytes. In a tweet the previous day, WikiLeaks had released 678.4 megabytes of DNC emails.
The existence of the email was first reported by CNN on Friday. CNN said the email was sent on September 4, before the WikiLeaks release, but the copy of the email obtained by AP shows it was sent 10 days later.
Trump Jr last month released a series of private Twitter exchanges between himself and WikiLeaks during and after the 2016 election, including pleas from the website to publicise its leaks.
The newly-discovered September 14, 2016 email was sent from a Yahoo account and signed by a person named Michael Erickson. On Friday, the AP left a phone message at a number listed for Erickson and emailed the account. The messages weren't immediately returned.
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