Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said Saturday it had been hacked and suggested Iranian operatives were involved in the theft and distribution of sensitive internal documents.
The campaign did not provide concrete evidence of Iranian involvement, but the claim comes a day after Microsoft released a report detailing attempts by foreign agents to interfere with the 2024 US campaign.
It cited an incident in June in which Iran’s military intelligence unit sent a “spear-phishing email to a senior official in the presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior adviser.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” A National Security Council spokesman said in a statement that it takes any report of inappropriate foreign interference “extremely seriously” and condemns any government or entity that attempts to undermine confidence in US democratic institutions, but said it would be referred to the Justice Department. thing.
Politico first reported the hack on Saturday. The store said it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — forwarded research material apparently done by the campaign on Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document is dated February 23, almost five months before Trump chose Vance as his running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to interfere with the 2024 elections and sow chaos in our entire democratic process,” Cheung said.
He was referring to a Microsoft report released Friday and its findings that “Iranian hackers hacked into the account of a ‘senior official’ in the June 2024 US presidential campaign, which coincides with the selection of President Trump’s vice presidential nominee.”
“The Iranians know that President Trump will end their reign of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said, warning that “any media outlet or news agency that prints documents or internal communications is doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing just that whatever they want.”
In response to the Microsoft report, Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied plans to interfere or launch cyber attacks in the US presidential election.
Cheung did not immediately answer questions about the campaign’s interaction with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft said Saturday it had no comment beyond the blog post and Friday’s report.
In the report, Microsoft stated that “foreign malign influence on the 2024 US election started slowly but has steadily accelerated over the past six months, initially due to Russian activity, but more recently as a result of Iranian activity.”
The analysis continued: “Iran’s cyber-influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles. Iran’s activity has been significant and distinguishable from Russian campaigns because it has appeared later in the election season and has used cyber attacks aimed more at electoral behavior than at swaying voters.”
“Recent activity suggests that the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be just as committed to the 2024 election,” Microsoft concluded.
Specifically, the report said that in June 2024, Iran’s military intelligence unit Mint Sandstorm sent a phishing email to the US presidential campaign through a compromised account of a former adviser.
“The phishing message contained a fake forwarder with a hyperlink that directs traffic through an operator-controlled domain before redirecting to the listed domain,” the report states.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported hack or the Democratic nominee’s cybersecurity protocols.
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Associated Press writers Mae Anderson in New York and Fatima Hussein in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware contributed to this report.
