Former President Donald Trump’s campaign said Saturday that the organization had been hacked, suggesting Iranian actors were involved in the theft and distribution of confidential internal documents.
The campaign did not provide specific evidence of Iranian involvement, but the claim comes a day after Microsoft published a report detailing attempts by foreign agents to interfere with the US campaign in 2024.
It cited a case of an Iranian military intelligence agency that in June “sent a spearfishing email to a senior presidential campaign official from a hacked email account of a former senior adviser.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Politico first reported on the hack on Saturday. The outlet reported that it began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign had apparently compiled on Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. The document was dated Feb. 23, nearly five months before Trump picked Vance as his running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to disrupt the 2024 elections and sow chaos in our democratic process,” Cheung said.
He pointed to the Microsoft report released on Friday and its conclusions, namely that “Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘senior official’ of the US presidential campaign in June 2024, coinciding with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential candidate.”
“The 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, warning that “any media or news organization that reprints documents or internal communications is doing the work of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
In response to Microsoft’s report, Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied any plans to disrupt or cyberattack the US presidential election.
Cheung did not immediately respond to questions about the campaign’s interactions with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft said Saturday it had no comment beyond its blog post and Friday report.
In that report, Microsoft stated that “foreign malign influence related to the 2024 U.S. elections started slowly but has steadily gained momentum over the past six months, initially driven by Russian operations, but more recently by Iranian activities.”
The analysis continued: “Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three U.S. election cycles. Iran’s operations are notable and distinct from Russian campaigns because they appear later in the election season and use cyberattacks that are focused more on electoral behavior than on influencing voters.”
“Recent activities suggest that the Iranian regime – along with the Kremlin – may also be involved in the 2024 elections,” Microsoft concluded.
The report specifically noted that Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian military intelligence service, sent a phishing email to a U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024 via the hacked account of a former adviser.
“The phishing email contained a fake forward with a hyperlink that routes traffic through an actor-controlled domain before redirecting to the stated domain,” the report said.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported hacking or the Democratic candidate’s cybersecurity protocols.
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Associated Press journalists Mae Anderson in New York and Fatima Hussein in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, contributed to this report.
