Leaked AfD emails contradict Weidel's account of 2017 illegal donations

Leaked emails from a hack of AfD accounts appear to contradict Alice Weidel's public account of how 132,000 euros in illegal Swiss donations reached her 2017 campaign, according to a joint investigation by NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The donations — split into 18 tranches, routed through an intermediary and sourced from outside the EU — were ruled illegal in 2018. Weidel said at the time she only learned of them in September 2017, weeks after they arrived, and that she had not been involved in the day-to-day management of campaign finance: "In das Tagesgeschäft der Wahlkampffinanzierung war ich nicht eingebunden."

The newly published leak contains a July 2017 email carrying Weidel's sender address in which she writes that donations had been announced to her and that a party contact at her Bodensee district association should check the account twice a week for incoming transfers. A second July 2017 email with her sender address states that a social media manager would use donations received into the district account exclusively for Facebook spending, and instructs two associates to open a dedicated campaign account to which Weidel herself would have personal access.

Four days after the donations were flagged in that email, the series of 18 transfers began.

The hack, carried out by unidentified attackers, exposed mail accounts across the AfD. Weidel is now the party's most powerful figure.