The Trump campaign claims the emails and documents were stolen by “foreign sources” seeking to “sow chaos” and influence the 2024 presidential election, multiple media outlets reported over the weekend.
On Saturday, Politico announced that it had received Trump campaign documents from an anonymous AOL email going back several months. The leaker, who identified himself only as “Robert,” attached a 271-page investigative report detailing publicly known weaknesses in Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, as well as partial dossier from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. According to Politico, “Robert” claimed to have “legal and court documents” and “internal campaign discussions” for Donald Trump.
“Media outlets and news organizations that reprint documents or internal communications are doing America’s enemies a favour,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chung told reporters following the news. Chung pointed to a report released by Microsoft on August 9 that detailed a phishing attack that had been hijacked in June on the account of a former adviser and targeted unnamed “senior” campaign associates.
According to Microsoft, hackers linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sent spear-phishing emails that contained “fake forwarding emails and hyperlinks that direct traffic to attacker-controlled domains and then redirect them to the listed domains.” The group is known by several names, including Mint Sandstorm and Charming Kitten, according to Microsoft. In past years, the same group has allegedly targeted the World Health Organization, sent malware-laden holiday greetings to U.S. officials, and carried out many other attacks.
Microsoft said in a report this week that it was tracking an increase in “significant influence operations by Iranian actors.” The company added that Iran-linked campaigns stand out from Russian ones because they “emerged later in the election season and launched cyberattacks that were more election-focused than voter mobilization.”
The hacking group known as Guccifer 2.0 gained access to Democratic National Committee emails through a spear-phishing attack in 2016. The hackers leaked thousands of DNC emails and documents ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, leading to the resignation of then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Department of Justice’s indictment of 12 Russian military officers.
