Internal communications of the Trump campaign were hacked as part of Iran’s election interference assault on America.
A day after Microsoft announced that a presidential campaign had been breached, Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said the Trump campaign had been attacked, according to Fox News.
Reports in July after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump said Iran had been seeking to assassinate Trump for his role in approving the killing of Iranian Geb. Qasem Soleimani.
Politico was the first to report the hack, and said it had been sent internal Trump campaign documents by a source that used the nane “Robert.”
The documents Politico received included a 271-page “dossier” on Sen. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate. Politico said one of its sources it did not name said the file Politico received as a a preliminary version of the file used to vet Vance.
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Politico said that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was also sent documents hacked from the Trump campaign.
The report did not disclose details of any information sent to Politico other than the Vance dossier, which was compiled from publicly available information.
“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,” Cheung said
“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House. Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” he said.
Do you believe Iran was behind the hack or a Democratic operative?
On Friday, Microsoft indicated how the campaign was compromised.
It said that as an “Iranian group, this one connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.”
“The email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link. Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate. We’ve since notified those targeted,” Microsoft wrote.
The announcement noted that a separate Iranian group is collecting “strategic intelligence … particularly in satellite, defense, and health sectors with some targeting of US government organizations, often in swing states.”
Another group includes Iranian hackers, who are “even more extreme,” with plans to incite “violence against political figures or groups, with the ultimate goals of inciting chaos, undermining authorities, and sowing doubt about election integrity.”
A report in The Washington Post citing sources it did not name said that at some point the summer, the campaign was aware it had been breached, but did not notify authorities.
At the time, some members of the campaign were told to increase their email security.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said Iran “and others will stop at nothing, because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long. What Iran doesn’t realize is that I will make the World a better and safer place, and that’s good for them, also!”
