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Donald Trump’s campaign has said a number of its internal emails have been hacked, blaming Iran for the breach and charging Tehran with seeking to “interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process”.
The former president’s campaign officials did not provide any direct evidence for the claim but cited a recent Microsoft report that found Iranian hackers had broken into the email account of a high-ranking official on the US presidential campaign as well as recent warnings of threats by Tehran to Trump’s life.
“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,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung.
He added: “The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House.”
The former president’s camp disclosed the hack after the Politico news site said it had been sent emails from an anonymous account containing documents from the campaign.
The extent of the breach remains unclear. Politico said it began receiving emails in late July, including internal campaign communications and a dossier on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
In a report issued on Friday Microsoft said a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps breached the account of a “high-ranking official of a presidential campaign” with a spear-phishing email. The Trump campaign noted this coincided “with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee”.
The US intelligence community has issued repeated warnings about Iran’s increasingly aggressive foreign influence efforts. Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, said in July that Tehran had sought to undermine confidence in US democratic institutions, in particular by stoking and funding ongoing protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
The hack comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions in the Middle East as the US and its allies work to prevent all out war in the region after Israel’s assassination of top Hamas and Hizbollah officials in Tehran and Beirut late last month.
During his presidency Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, triggering a crisis in relations with the Islamic state that the Biden administration has quietly sought to repair by pursuing back-channel talks aimed at calming tensions. Trump has signalled he would again take a hard line towards Iran should he return to office.
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