Donald Trump's US presidential campaign team announced on Saturday that some of its internal communications had been hacked. ReutersIran is suspected of being behind the attack.
The Republican statement came shortly after. Written by PoliticoIn July, the newspaper began receiving emails from an anonymous source offering credible documents from the inner workings of Trump staff, including a report on the “potential vulnerability” of presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
Over the past few weeks, the person — who used an AOL email account and identified himself only as “Robert” — forwarded messages that appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official. Among the documents was a research dossier the campaign appeared to have prepared on Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, dated Feb. 23. Politico said it had confirmed the authenticity of the documents.
The investigative dossier was a 271-page document based on publicly available information about Vance’s past and statements, some of which, like his past criticism of Trump, were labeled “potential changes” in the document. The person also sent part of a research paper on Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who was also a finalist for the vice presidential nomination.
“They have different documents,” the person told Politico. [Trump] From his legal documents and court documents to internal campaign discussions.” When asked how they obtained the documents, the person replied: “I suggest you don’t ask where I got them. Any answer to that question harms me and legally prevents you from publishing them.”
According to the newspaper, the scope of the information obtained by the hacker is unclear, but it represents a serious security vulnerability for the Trump campaign.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States with the intent of interfering in the 2024 election and inciting chaos in our democratic processes,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung said in a statement.
Late Saturday night, Trump posted on his Truth Social app that Microsoft had just notified his campaign staff that Iran had hacked one of its websites. Trump blamed Iran, adding that it “only had access to publicly available information.” He did not provide any further details about the hack.
The Trump campaign cited a report Friday by Microsoft researchers that hackers linked to the Iranian government tried to breach the campaign account of a “senior official” in the June U.S. presidential election. Hackers took control of a former political adviser’s account and then used it to target the official.
A Microsoft spokesperson declined to name the targeted officials or provide further details after the report was published.
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York said in an email that “the Iranian government has no intention or motive to interfere in the US presidential election.” The Trump campaign responded to the allegations by saying, “We do not believe such reports.”
In response to Microsoft's findings on Friday, Iran's mission to the United Nations told Reuters that its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces” and that it had no plans to launch cyber attacks.
Reuters reminds us that during Trump’s tenure, relations with Iran have been strained. Under Trump, the United States killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and withdrew from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal.
