Former President Trump’s campaign recently announced that some of its internal communications were hacked by a foreign source.
The violation is First reported Politico denied the allegations after receiving an email from an anonymous account that included a Trump campaign document as an attachment.
The campaign claimed the leak came from a “foreign source hostile to the United States.” The campaign pointed to a report released Friday by Microsoft that said Iran was targeting the 2024 elections.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States and were intended to interfere in the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout the Democratic electoral process,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chang said in a statement to The Hill.
Chang said the Microsoft report found that Iranian hackers “compromised the accounts of senior officials” of the June 2024 presidential election campaign.
Following the attempted assassination of President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last month, the Biden administration claimed Iran had threatened to kill the former president, a report the Iranian foreign ministry denied and called “malicious.”
Chang pointed to the timing of the campaign hacking and “the Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump around the same time as the tragedy in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
“Iran knows that President Trump will end their reign of terror just as he did during his first four years in the White House,” Chang said. “Media and outlets that reprint documents and internal communications are following the orders of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
Politico said that starting on July 22, the company began receiving emails from an AOL email account from someone claiming to be “Robert.”
The documents provided to the outlet included a February investigation into Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, and similar documents were sent to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who was also a finalist for Trump’s running mate.
Roberts told Politico he has “a variety of documents” related to Trump’s legal battles and internal campaign discussions.
When asked how he obtained the documents, the person told media, “I don’t think you should be interested in where I got them from. If I answer this question at all, I will put myself at risk and there will be legal restrictions on me publishing the documents.”
It is unclear how much information the hackers were able to access, but the outlet reported that it made it clear the Trump campaign had experienced a major security breach.
