Michael Wolff's bombshell behind-the-scenes look at President Trump's first year in office is still making waves, despite continued questions around some of his book's claims. Perhaps that's because the response from President Very Stable Genius has only reinforced the book's running theme: that many around Trump and in congressional leadership question whether he is fit to hold office. It seems it's not just the president—who's, like, really smart—with a demonstrated interested in the book's failure, however. Monday morning, the media organisation Wikileaks, which claims to seek more government transparency on behalf of citizens, tweeted out a link to the full text of Wolff's book.
Did the text leak, or did Wikileaks leak it? Either way, the organisation is spreading it. While this might put the text in front of a few more eyeballs, it's hard to see how damaging sales of a book critical of the U.S. administration ultimately lines up with Wikileaks' founding mission. From the "Why the media (and particularly Wiki leaks) is important" section of the "About" page of Wikileaks' website:
Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society’s institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media.
Wikileaks released no information that could shed more light on Wolff's motives, or on how his reporting was done, or on whether his sources were credible. It merely shared his work so that people can get it for free, rather than (indirectly) pay Wolff for it. This is first and foremost a violation of copyright law. But it would also seem to be the opposite of encouraging more transparency and the free flow of information, even if this batch of information is now more readily available online.
Real reporting requires time and money, which will hopefully be recouped through sales. If reporters are concerned their work might be leaked online, robbing them of some of the fruits of their labor, they may be less inclined to do the kind of digging involved. That's particularly the case when they also know they'll face the kind of tweet-based presidential backlash Wolff has. Wikileaks' tweet is a negative force working on the incentive structure for people who facilitate more transparency, and is not in line with its stated mission.
What it does seem in line with is Wikileaks' shall-we-say evolving mission since at least the 2016 campaign. The site published huge troves of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, which we now know were obtained by hackers linked to the Russian government. U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Russian intelligence "used WikiLeaks to release data of U.S. victims obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee." Hillary Clinton has accused Wikileaks of being a "tool of Russian intelligence," and Trump's own CIA director, Mike Pompeo, has described it as a "non-state hostile intelligence service." Meanwhile, Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic reported on how the Wikileaks Twitter account—which many believe is actively run by its founder, Julian Assange—was repeatedly in contact with Donald Trump, Jr., a prominent member of his father's presidential campaign, during the 2016 cycle.
Wikileaks did a document dump targeting the Russian government in September, though as Wired reports, it was mostly information that was already publicly available. Even if that effort contained no ulterior motives, it seems clear that the organization's main priority is not, at least anymore, a kind of disinterested, universal transparency in government. Unless "transparency" means undermining a writer's livelihood after he writes something critical of the powers that be.
Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis.
