AfD leak details 420,000 emails on Trump outreach

Germany’s far-right AfD pursued contacts with Donald Trump and Maga figures for more than a decade, according to a Guardian report on Oct. 23 based on a leak of more than 420,000 emails.

The disclosures matter because the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017 with 12.6% of the vote, came second in Germany’s February 2025 federal election with 20.8%, and now leads national polls at about 30%.

The Guardian said the leaked material includes emails, documents and personnel records from the party’s founding in 2013 to the present, with most of the material dating from before 2019. The data was provided to reporters by Distributed Denial of Secrets.

According to the report, senior AfD figures debated how to congratulate Trump after his 2016 election win and included language wishing that his “hopes as a person be fulfilled”.

The Guardian reported that a Nov. 11, 2016, telegram sent under then leader Frauke Petry’s name told Trump: “We are confident that you will readjust the transatlantic relationship and end the wars in Syria and Ukraine by mutual agreement with Russia.”

The leaked documents also show AfD officials discussing whether to ask the incoming Trump administration for help removing the “enemy-state clause” from the UN charter, according to the report. The clause dates to 1945 and refers to states that were enemies of signatories during the second world war.

The Guardian reported that Georg Pazderski, then the party’s Berlin leader and a member of its federal board, objected to adding the request to an inauguration letter. “It looks like a begging letter,” he wrote, according to the leaked documents cited by the newspaper.

The AfD said in a statement on Monday that a hosting provider used by the party had been attacked at the end of September and that “only a few mailboxes” had been copied. It told dpa that most of the mailboxes had not been used for years, while party sources quoted by Tagesspiegel said the published material appeared authentic.

The party became a vehicle for anti-immigration voters after 1.2 million refugees arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016. In September, it won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt and is trying to form Germany’s first far-right state government since the second world war.

Trump praised the Saxony-Anhalt result on Truth Social, ending his post with “MGGA!!!”, a German version of his Make America Great Again slogan, according to the Guardian report.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency monitors the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation, and state agencies classify five of its regional branches as confirmed extremist. Nearly all other German parties have maintained a “firewall” against governing with it.

The Guardian also cited AfD leader Alice Weidel’s contacts with Steve Bannon as part of what it described as a wider effort to build ties with Trump-aligned political figures.

Source: News report, The Guardian, Oct. 23, 2026.