The Trump campaign has confirmed that some of their internal communications have been hacked. Politico also reported that they’ve been sent internal memos from an anonymous account that details some of the Trump campaign’s internal operations.
Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, declined to say if they had further information substantiating the campaigns’ suggestion that it was targeted by Iran.
Cheung said, “On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee.”
According to Washington Examiner:
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has reported it has been hacked, and Politico confirmed confidential memos from the campaign were sent to them.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Cheung did not provide confirmation to Politico for how he knew the hackers were from Iran.
The news outlet reported they received documents from a person who called themselves only “Robert” from an AOL email account, and the records included research on Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).
After the assassination attempt on Trump, reports emerged that there had been unrelated Iranian plots to kill the former president. In his statement to the outlet, Cheung referred to those reports as he accused Iran of this hacking.
Politico described in an article how they came into possession of the information and hinted at some of the data in it:
On July 22, POLITICO began receiving emails from an anonymous account. Over the course of the past few weeks, the person — who used an AOL email account and identified themselves only as “Robert” — relayed what appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official. A research dossier the campaign had apparently done on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, which was dated Feb. 23, was included in the documents. The documents are authentic, according to two people familiar with them and granted anonymity to describe internal communications. One of the people described the dossier as a preliminary version of Vance’s vetting file.
The research dossier was a 271-page document based on publicly available information about Vance’s past record and statements, with some — such as his past criticisms of Trump — identified in the document as “POTENTIAL VULNERABILITIES.” The person also sent part of a research document about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who was also a finalist for the vice presidential nomination.
The person said they had a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.”
Asked how they obtained the documents, the person responded: “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated when more is known.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
