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US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign said on Saturday that some of its internal communications had been hacked and blamed the Iranian government.
Earlier on Saturday, Politico reported that it had received emails from an anonymous account containing documents from the Trump campaign.
Politico said it obtained the emails, which contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a research dossier compiled by the campaign on a Trump running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance’s potential vulnerabilities. The publication was also sent part of a document about Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was one of the contenders to join Trump on the Republican Party ticket.
Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung put it bluntly:
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States in order to interfere in the 2024 election and wreak havoc on our democratic process.
A new report from Microsoft revealed on Friday that Iranian hackers breached the account of a “senior official” in the US presidential campaign in June 2024, coinciding with President Trump’s choice of vice presidential nominee. This follows recent reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump around the same time as the tragedy in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Iranians know that President Trump will end their reign of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House. Any media or news agency that reprints documents or internal communications is doing the will of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
Chung cited a recent report released by Microsoft that Iranian operatives have stepped up their efforts to influence and monitor the U.S. presidential election, creating fake news targeting liberal and conservative voters and trying to hack an unnamed presidential campaign.
It is still unclear whether Iran is responsible for the attack. The Iranian mission to the UN said that “there is no credibility to such reports.”
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