Activist publishes 11,000 WikiLeaks Twitter direct messages

An activist has published 11,000 direct messages on Twitter between the WikiLeaks account and a group of its supporters.

The direct messages were published by Emma Best on her own website. Her Twitter account states that she is a journalist on the East Coast. Best has been critical of WikiLeaks and has advocated for government transparency. 

{mosads}Some of the direct messages were previously published, but this is the first time all of the direct messages have been posted. 

The messages show that WikiLeaks wanted the GOP to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

“We believe it would be much better for the GOP to win,” the WikiLeaks account states to a supporter named “Emmy B” in one of the messages from 2015. 

Another Twitter message from the WikiLeaks account describes Clinton as a “bright, well-connected, sadistic sociopath.”

WikiLeaks had been accused of bias against Democrats during the presidential race because of its release of hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee.

Critics believe that the documents released by the group were consistently helpful to President Trump’s campaign. 

Best said in an exchange with the website Motherboard that she released the messages because she wanted to show how WikiLeaks was working with other online entities to shape public discussions. 

“The idea was that the attitudes and behavior of WL [Wikileaks] behind closed doors is relevant, especially their coordination of PR, propaganda and troll ops through assets that are public supporters but not publicly known to take cues from WL,” Best told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message.

Micah Lee, a technologist and journalist at The Intercept, confirmed to Motherboard the veracity of the message repository that Best published, saying that the cryptographic hash on her file matched his.

It’s not clear who controls the WikiLeaks Twitter account, though speculation has centered around the group’s founder, Julian Assange, who remains in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 

Assange could soon face expulsion though. Ecuadorian officials this week said that he cannot remain there indefinitely and that he should be extradited elsewhere.