Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate August 8, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Joe Raedle |
The Trump campaign said on Saturday that a foreign hacker had penetrated its systems and gained access to internal communications channels.
Politico obtained leaked campaign documents from an anonymous source on July 22, according to the news outlet's report Saturday. Politico first reported that the campaign had acknowledged the hack.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States. Their goal was to influence the 2024 election and sow chaos in our democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
CNBC has not independently verified the source of the hack.
The Trump campaign statement suggested that Iranian hackers were behind the breach, but did not provide any direct evidence to support this claim.
Instead, Cheung cited a Microsoft report on Friday warning that Iranian hackers had launched several attempts to influence the US presidential election, including sending a phishing email to a senior campaign official in June using the hacked account of a senior adviser.
Microsoft declined to comment on whether the Trump campaign was the target of the Iranian hacker attack.
Earlier this summer, U.S. authorities learned of an Iranian assassination attempt on Trump. Authorities learned of the plot in the weeks leading up to the attempted assassination of Trump at his Pennsylvania rally in July, although no connection between the assassin and Iran has yet been established.
Politico reported that the site received documents from Trump's campaign from an anonymous email account identifying itself only as “Robert.” Among the documents was a 271-page dossier on Trump's current running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, and another file on Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was on the shortlist of vice presidential candidates.
When Politico asked the anonymous source how she got the documents, she reportedly replied: “I suggest you don't ask where I got them. Any answer to that question would compromise me and would also legally prohibit you from publishing them.”
Politico declined to comment further whether it had cooperated with the Trump campaign team and law enforcement authorities in investigating the hacker attack.
The reported hacking of the campaign comes as the FBI issues warnings about cybersecurity threats around the world, particularly related to the outcome of the U.S. election.
“We absolutely must expect that foreign actors will seek to exert influence and interfere,” said Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, at a congressional hearing in January ahead of the 2024 election. “To be clear, Americans should have confidence in the integrity of our election infrastructure because a tremendous amount of work has already been done there.”
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