Email suggests efforts to give Trump campaign WikiLeaks documents

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

Donald Trump, Jr., (L) places a hand on the shoulder of his father, then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, during in a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on November 7, 2016.

Weeks before WikiLeaks contacted Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter during the 2016 presidential election, a person who identified themselves as “Mike Erickson” sent Trump Jr., his father and others in the Trump Organization a website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, NBC News reported Friday.

The email, first reported by CNN, was sent two months after hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee were already made public and a month before WikiLeaks leaked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email correspondence.

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

The email, which reportedly came with a decryption key, also came 10 days before hacked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell were leaked by the website DCLeaks.com. The email suggested that the Trump organization could access those records, CNN reported. NBC News did not independently verify the email’s discussion of Powell.

U.S. intelligence has said that DCLeaks was used by a Russian intelligence service to release hacked information during the election. WikiLeaks — as well as a network of so-called “quasi-government trolls” — was also used by Russian intelligence in 2016, according to the joint report from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange appeared to deny a role in the email.

“It’s not clear what this has to do with @WikiLeaks,” he wrote. “Many enthusiastic readers emailed around archives of our publications during the election.”

Congressional investigators are reportedly seeking to determine the significance of the newly disclosed email. It’s unknown whether the email was sent by WikiLeaks and whether any of the WikiLeaks data was downloaded by the Trump campaign.

Alan Futerfas, Trump Jr.’s attorney, verified the email, according to CNN, and said Trump Jr. did not recall receiving it.

“We understand that the media reported 12 hours prior to this email that the DNC emails had been hacked or leaked,” Futerfas told CNN. He said his team does not know who Erickson is and did not respond to the email.

Futerfas and an attorney for the president didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC on Friday.

It’s not yet clear that the president used the email address that was used by “Mike Erickson.” Emails to the president generally go through intermediaries.