REUTERS/Neil Hall
Twitter DMs obtained by BuzzFeed News show that in the summer of 2016 WikiLeaks was working to obtain files from Guccifer 2.0—a hacker whom The Daily Beast has identified as a Russian intelligence officer. According to the report, journalist Emma Best approached Guccifer 2.0 about gaining access to Democratic Congressional Campaign files that had been “teased” on the hacker’s blog. Guccifer told Best that he wanted to “send a large trove to wikileaks” when she asked if she could post the data on archive.org. Best then relayed that message to WikiLeaks via Twitter DM. “Please ‘leave,’ their conversation with them and us,” WikiLeaks responded. “We would appreciate it if you did not dump the docs and obviously archive.org will delete them anyway.” WikiLeaks also told Best in a message that they did not want anyone else leaking the data because “these other media groups are very likely to take a stupid initial angle.” Less than an hour after WikiLeaks’ last message to Best, Guccifer 2.0 tweeted that he had sent over a “major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks.” Best told BuzzFeed that she believed she was speaking directly to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “or his proxy” on Twitter.