Trump Campaign Claims to Have Been Hacked by Iran; FBI Now Involved in Investigation

The campaign staff of Former President Donald Trump claims that Iranian threat actors have hacked them and stolen important documents, and they’re pointing the finger at a recent Microsoft report that underlines a remarkably similar situation.

Hacking a political campaign is not an outlandish proposition. If anything, these types of incidents have shaped the last decade, so when a presidential candidate says that they have been hacked, there’s typically good reason to believe it.

The claims from the Trump campaign are not nuanced in any way, directly identifying Iranian hackers as the perpetrators. On Aug. 8, Microsoft published a report entitled “Iran Targeting 2024 US Election” that underlines the Middle Eastern country’s intent to influence the US presidential vote.

According to Microsoft, the various Iranian groups use different tactics, but there’s one line in the report that the Trump campaign is referring to.

“Yet another Iranian group, this one connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” reads the report.

“The email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link. Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate.”

Politico talked with a Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, who said that “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.”

The reason Politico talked with the Trump campaign has to do with the fact that the publication has been receiving anonymous emails from someone calling themselves Robert, which contain internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official. The documents include a vetting research dossier on senator Sen. JD Vance, now Trump’s vice president running mate.

There’s a lot more than just that dossier, but Politico hasn’t published the documents so far, especially since the hacker has said that if they knew how he got the information it would be impossible for the publication to reveal it online.

It’s still unclear if Iranian hackers had anything to do with it, but it turns out that the FBI is now involved in the matter, according to The Record. The FBI hasn’t said anything more than just the actual confirmation of their involvement.