US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign team said Saturday that some of its international communications had been hacked by those “hostile” to the United States.
“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 spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Cheung was responding to revelations by the Politico news outlet that it had begun receiving emails from an anonymous account containing documents from within the Republican Party candidate’s campaign operation.
Trump’s campaign provided no specific evidence of Iran’s involvement but did imply that Tehran was responsible by mentioning a report by Microsoft researchers that was published this week.
The report said Iran government-tied hackers tried breaking into the account of a “high-ranking official” on the US presidential campaign in June.
That report did not provide further details on the official’s identity.
My assumption is Trump and his top advisors all have regular and friendly dealings with foreign adversaries.
So I expect this was less of a security breach and more of an accidental disclosure along with other intentionally disclosed information. Something along the lines of an assistant was asked to email the candidate dossiers and oppo research, and they zipped up the entire folder sitting on their desktop named “candidates”.