Anika Begay
By Kanishka Singh and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign said on Saturday that some of his internal communications had been hacked and placed the blame on the Iranian government, citing past hostilities between Trump and Iran, without providing direct evidence.
The GOP campaign statement came shortly after the news site Politico reported that it began receiving emails in July from an anonymous source providing authentic documents from inside Trump’s business, including a report on the “potential vulnerabilities” of his running mate J.D. (NASDAQ:) Vance.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, with the intent to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos in our democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
On Saturday night, Trump posted on his Truth Social app that Microsoft (NASDAQ:) had just informed the campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites. He blamed Iran, adding that they were “only able to get publicly available information.” He did not provide further details about the hack.
Reuters has not independently verified the identities of the alleged hackers or their motives.
The Trump campaign pointed to a Friday report from Microsoft researchers that said Iranian government-linked hackers attempted to break into the account of a “high-ranking official” in a U.S. presidential campaign in June. The hackers took over an account belonging to a former political adviser and then used it to target the official, the report said. That report did not provide further details about the identities of the targets.
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 reason to interfere in the United States presidential election.”
“We give no credence to those reports,” he added in response to the Trump campaign’s accusations.
In response to Microsoft’s findings, Iran’s U.N. mission told Reuters on Friday that its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces” and that it had no plans to launch cyber attacks.
The former president had tense relations with Iran during his time in office. Under Trump, the United States killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran.
“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.
Trump survived an assassination attempt in July. While there were no suggestions that the suspect was linked to Iran, CNN reported last month that the U.S. had intelligence on an Iranian plot against Trump. Iran denied the allegations.
Late last month, a senior intelligence official told reporters in a briefing that Tehran and Moscow are maintaining the same presidential preferences as in past cycles, with Iranian agents attempting to dismantle the Republican ticket while Russia has made efforts to smear Democrats, according to previous intelligence community assessments.
