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WikiLeaks apparently promoted a pirated copy of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, a bestselling book about Donald Trump’s first year in the White House as president. They tweeted a Google Drive linked that led to a full PDF of Fire and Fury available to view online. The tweet has since been deleted, but WikiLeaks then re-posted the link with an added level of separation by saying that the book had “leak[ed] onto internet.”
The bigger question here is why WikiLeaks did this. Their specialization is publishing “censored or otherwise restricted” official documents, and the proceeded to publishing a widely available book. The one thing to take into consideration here is that the White House has condemned Fire and Fury for its negative portrayal of Trump, and another theory says that WikiLeaks is trying to sabotage the book’s commercial success, especially since it sought the Trump campaign’s approval in 2016. WikiLeaks for its defense said that “[WikiLeaks] reports on leaks. Hint: It’s in the name.”
Since the book became a wide success, Trump’s lawyers have tried to stop the sales of Fire and Fury’s publication, which essentially meant that the book qualified as “censored,” though they were unsuccessful. The Jolt Journal wasn’t able to verify the file’s contents before it was removed by Google, but there’s not indication that WikiLeaks was trying to distribute anything unpublished.
