Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump attends a campaign rally.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Republican nominee Donald Trump said he was informed by Microsoft Corp. that one of his campaign websites was hacked by the Iranian government, but said the hackers were only able to access “publicly available information” in the breach.
“Nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Saturday. “Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long.”
The hack was first reported by Politico, which said it had begun receiving emails in July containing internal Trump campaign documents from an anonymous account. Those files, released over the course of a few weeks, included a dossier on Senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick, according to the report.
Microsoft directed a request for comment to its report and a blog post discussing its findings.
Trump’s campaign acknowledged the hack earlier Saturday, casting it as an effort to interfere in November’s presidential election against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and warning media outlets not to publish any materials they received from the breach.
“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 spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” Cheung added.
A report from Microsoft detailed increasing efforts by Iran to target the US election, including fake news sites to influence voter opinion and hacks to obtain intelligence on political campaigns.
Among the actions in the report was a so-called spear phishing email in June to “a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” Microsoft, which didn’t identify the campaign in its report, had said that attempt was from an Iranian group connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The company had said it “notified those targeted.”
“We do not accord any credence to such reports. The Iranian Government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election,” Iran’s mission to the UN said in a statement about the Trump campaign’s hack claims earlier Saturday, before the Republican nominee’s post.
Trump’s spokesman Cheung had earlier said the hack coincided with “the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a Vice Presidential nominee.” Trump announced his vice presidential choice in mid-July. Cheung also pointed to recent reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate the former president separate from the attempt on his life by a gunman at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
That Iranian threat appeared to be linked to a broader pattern of threats against former Trump administration officials stemming from the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, in January 2020 — an attack ordered by then-President Trump.