On Twitter, Mr Assange said he had been approached before the 2016 election by Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Mr Trump during the final months of the campaign. Mr Assange did not disclose what kind of help Mr Nix sought, only that he had declined the request.
“I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica,” Mr Assange wrote, “and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks.”
But The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Mr Nix had emailed Mr Assange looking for copies of more than 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private server and never publicly released. Mrs. Clinton has said that the emails were personal in nature.
A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday evening.
It is not clear precisely when the two men corresponded. CNN reported on Wednesday that the emails were exchanged in the summer of 2016. Cambridge Analytica was being paid by a rival campaign — that of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — through early June, according to Federal Election Commission records. By early summer, Cambridge Analytica had also begun wooing the Trump campaign, which hired the firm in June. The firm’s principal owner is the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who backed Mr Cruz during the campaign before switching his allegiance to Mr Trump.
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