Leaked Emails Reveal AfD Decade-Long Courtship of Donald Trump
A massive data leak reveals the Alternative for Germany party spent a decade courting Donald Trump and Steve Bannon to align far-right political goals.
A data leak of more than 420,000 emails and documents has exposed a decade-long effort by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to build alliances with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. The trove, released by Distributed Denial of Secrets, shows party officials drafting obsequious messages to Trump after his 2016 election and requesting his help to remove enemy-state clauses from the UN charter.
The documents detail a clandestine political courtship between AfD leader Alice Weidel and strategist Steve Bannon, including a March 2018 meeting in Zurich. Although the AfD publicly distanced itself from Bannon at the time, internal records reveal discussions about hiring him to lead the party's media wing.
More recent records indicate these ties persisted into Trump's second term. AfD politicians, including foreign policy spokesman Markus Frohnmaier, met with U.S. State Department officials Sarah B. Rogers and Darren Beattie to discuss cultural exchange and migration. These efforts align with Trump's previous public praise for the party's electoral success in Saxony-Anhalt.
