Joe McConnell
The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign was targeted by hackers working for the Iranian government.
“We can confirm that the FBI is investigating this matter,” the agency said in a brief statement Monday, without specifically naming the former president or Iran.
A Trump campaign spokesperson told the BBC that the documents were obtained illegally from “foreign sources hostile to the United States.”
Iranian officials have denied any connection to the cyberattack, and the U.S. government has not formally accused Iran.
The FBI is also investigating whether Iranian hackers targeted the campaigns of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, BBC news partner CBS News reported, citing people familiar with the investigation.
The Trump campaign’s statement came a day after Microsoft released a report that Iranian hackers had targeted the campaign of an unnamed U.S. presidential candidate in June.
Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) said the campaign was sent a spear phishing email, which is a message designed to appear trustworthy in order to trick the victim into clicking on a malicious link.
Trump said on Saturday that hackers “only managed to obtain publicly available information.”
The FBI began investigating earlier this summer after both campaigns were targeted by phishing attempts, CBS News reported.
According to the Washington Post, three Biden-Harris campaign staffers were also targeted by phishing emails in the days before President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race.
A spokesperson for Harris’ campaign said in a statement to the media that the campaign “closely monitors and protects against cyber threats and we are not aware of any security breaches of our systems.”
The BBC has asked Harris’ campaign for comment.
According to the Washington Post, the FBI’s investigation into the hacking attempts was first opened in June.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff was among several lawmakers who called on the FBI to disclose its knowledge of the hacking attempts.
He said the U.S. intelligence community “moved too slowly to properly identify the hacking and dumping scheme Russia conducted” in 2016 and “should act quickly in this case.”
The news comes after Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell said he had requested a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the “alleged hacking of the Trump presidential campaign.”
“Yes, Trump is the most despicable person to ever seek office. He even tried to hack a foreigner in a past election… But that doesn’t mean America will ever tolerate foreign interference,” he wrote on X/Twitter on Saturday.
During his 2016 campaign rallies, he called on Russia to hack his opponent in the race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
US security sources had already raised the alarm about an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, unrelated to last month’s attempted attack in Pennsylvania.
And on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department indicted a Pakistani man allegedly linked to Iran for plotting to assassinate U.S. officials, potentially including the former president.
