CNN reports:
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 4 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race — two months after the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee were made public and one month before WikiLeaks began leaking the contents of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.
The email came less than three weeks before WikiLeaks itself messaged Trump Jr. and began an exchange of direct messages on Twitter. Trump Jr. told investigators he had no recollection of the September email.
The email also indicated that the Trump campaign could access records from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose hacked emails were made public by a Russian front group 10 days later.
1/ Trump, Trump Jr, and the Trump Organization received a decryption key and link to hacked Wikileaks documents. https://t.co/GftNXwfzWJ
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 8, 2017
2/ Trump Jr., through his lawyer, claims that he did not recall the email and didn’t act on it. Mueller’s team should be able to identify who acted on the email.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 8, 2017
3/ Merely acting on the email isn’t enough to establish criminal liability. Most importantly, Mueller would need to prove that a person who opened and used the documents knew they were stolen (or that the person was part of an agreement to steal the documents).
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 8, 2017
4/ Late in the campaign, it was generally known that servers were hacked and that the emails on Wikileaks resulted from those hacks. I don’t think Mueller would prosecute based solely on use of material from Wikileaks.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 8, 2017
5/ Receipt of this email, along with use of its contents, would take Mueller part of the way down the road of what he needs to prove. /end
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 8, 2017