Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reported Saturday that it had been hacked.
Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung released a statement about the alleged hack after Politico reported it began receiving emails from an anonymous account containing internal campaign documents.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States, with the aim of influencing the 2024 elections and sowing chaos in our democratic process,” Cheung said in a statement reported by Reuters.
Cheung said: “On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers hacked 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.”
He added: “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.”
The campaign cited a Microsoft report released Friday that alleged hackers with ties to the Iranian government “sent a spearfishing email to a senior presidential campaign official in June from the compromised email account of a former senior adviser.”
Microsoft has not released any details about the identity of the official or senior advisor, or the origins of the hack.
Trump’s campaign has not provided direct evidence of the alleged hack, and the Guardian has contacted Trump’s campaign and Microsoft for comment.
Following the assassination attempt on Trump last month, reports emerged that a threat from Iran prompted the Secret Service to beef up security around Trump ahead of the assassination attempt. However, this appears to have nothing to do with the attack on the rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Earlier this week, the US Department of Justice announced that a Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran had been charged in connection with a foiled plot to commit political assassinations on US soil.
According to a criminal complaint, 46-year-old Asif Merchant attempted to recruit people in the U.S. to carry out the plan in retaliation for the 2020 U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, the top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
FBI investigators believe Trump, who approved the drone strike on Soleimani, was one of the intended targets, a US official said, CNN reported at the time.
