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By Kanishka Singh and Nathan Lane
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign said on Saturday that some of its internal communications had been hacked and blamed the Iranian government, citing past hostilities between Trump and Iran without offering direct evidence.
The campaign’s statement came shortly after Politico reported that it began receiving emails in July from an anonymous source offering original documents from inside the Trump operation, including a report on “potential vulnerabilities” of his running mate J.D. Vance.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States, with the intent of interfering in the 2024 election and sowing chaos throughout our democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung said in a statement.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the identity of the alleged hackers or their motives.
The Trump campaign pointed to a report Friday from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) researchers that said hackers linked to the Iranian government tried to breach the account of a “high-level official” in a U.S. presidential campaign in June. The report said the hackers took over an account belonging to a former political adviser and then used it to target the official. The report did not provide further details about the identities of the targets.
A Microsoft spokesperson declined to name the targeted officials or provide additional details after the report was published.
Iran’s foreign ministry and its representative to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to Microsoft’s findings, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York told Reuters on Friday that its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces” and that it had no plans to launch cyber attacks.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations said that “the US presidential elections are an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”
Relations between the former president and Iran were tense while he was in office. Under Trump, the United States killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.
“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung added.
Trump survived an assassination attempt in July. While there has been no suggestion that the suspect was linked to Iran, CNN reported last month that the United States had intelligence of an Iranian plot against Trump. Iran has denied such allegations.
Late last month, a senior intelligence official told reporters at a briefing that Tehran and Moscow retained the same presidential preferences as in past cycles, with Iranian agents trying to tear up the Republican ticket while Russia has made efforts to discredit Democrats, according to previous intelligence community assessments.
