President Donald Trump’s eldest son on Monday promoted a conspiracy that originated with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

The conspiracy promoted by Donald Trump Jr. alleges that the New York Times “colluded” with Hillary Clinton while she was the Secretary of State.

“The double standard never ends. Every day @realDonaldTrump’s win is that much more impressive when you realize all he was actually up against,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.

The tweet linked to an article published on the conservative Daily Wire website, which claimed that an email released by WikiLeaks on Sunday night was “proof” that the New York Times “colluded” with the State Department in 2010.

The email released by WikiLeaks was authored by New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane. The email shows that he provided the State Department with information about when the newspaper planned to publish articles about a trove of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks alleged the New York Times was providing Clinton with “up to 9 days in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions.”

Shane, however, dismissed the allegations as “nonsense.” In a series of tweets, he explained that the newspaper worked with the State Department to protect dissidents from hostile retailation from foreign governments.

.1) Not sure who's writing this stuff for @WikiLeaks, but they need to talk to those who actually worked on the diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks, NYT and the other media partners (Guardian, Le Monde et al) all agreed on a plan to inform State Dept which cables were being published.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

.2) We had all agreed to redact the names of, say, Chinese professors and Russian dissidents who had spoken confidentially with US diplomats to prevent their being imprisoned or worse. But we wanted to make sure we understood all the potential dangers.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

.3) Totally standard journalistic practice. In one memorable instance, I had not taken out the name of Qaddafi's protocol chief, who in a cable preceding a visit to NYC had explained that the aging Qaddafi should not be asked to climb too many stairs, etc.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

.4) I told the State Dept we planned to use that cable. Their Libya specialists got on the phone with me and told me they feared that if we published the protocol chief's name, the great leader might take it as an insult and order his execution. We took the name out.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

.5) For that collaborative project, WikiLeaks' helpers created a very cool redaction template so that the different media outlets could see what they had redacted and what others had redacted to avoid mistakes. So @WikiLeaksin that instance followed legit journalistic principles.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

.This is nonsense. Check with the WikiLeaks volunteers who worked on this project. You'll learn WL created an online redaction engine so we could take out names of those who might be imprisoned or worse from cables we published. WL agreed on the consultation with State Dept.

— Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) December 31, 2017

In November 2017, it was revealed that Trump Jr. had exchanged private messages with WikiLeaks on Twitter in the run up to the 2016 presidential election.

The messages have been turned over to congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

WikiLeaks has connections to Russian military intelligence, according to a U.S. intelligence report (PDF) released in 2017. The report notes that the “Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.”

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