A phishing operation, carried out by “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” On Saturday, August 10, former President Donald Trump’s campaign team said it had been hacked and suggested that Iranian actors were involved in the theft and distribution of sensitive internal documents. “These documents were obtained illegally […] “with the aim of interfering with the 2024 election and sowing chaos in our democratic process,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.
It all starts with messages received by Politico. On July 22, the American media outlet reported that it had begun receiving emails from an anonymous account, the contents of which appeared to be a research file that Trump’s team had created on the Republican vice presidential candidate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The file, which included his past statements against Donald Trump, was dated February 23, nearly five months before the former president chose him as his running mate. Questioned by Politico, the hacker suggested that the outlet not be interested “in the provenance of these documents,” because “any answer to this question [le] would compromise” and prevent Politico from “legally publishing them.”
Iranian hackers suspected
Cheung declined to say whether he had any additional information. But the spokesperson pointed to a Microsoft report released Friday that said “Iranian hackers attacked the account of a ‘senior official’ in the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024,” which coincides with President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential candidate. “The Iranians know that President Trump will end their reign of terror as he did during his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said, suggesting their possible role in the hack. Last month, reports surfaced of mounting evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies were working to kill Trump in retaliation for his decision to order the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020. The Iranian government has not responded so far.
Back in 2016, senior Democratic Party officials were hacked ahead of the presidential election. The breach, which U.S. national security officials blamed on Russia, led to the leak of embarrassing emails documenting the inner workings of the party and the campaign of its former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Many of the emails were then posted on WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked documents, in an attempt to embarrass the presidential candidate. Donald Trump’s team, meanwhile, capitalized on the documents to discredit his opponent, as a Justice Department investigation revealed a year later.