US security agencies said on Monday that Iran was behind the recent hack targeting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, accusing Tehran of trying to influence the 2024 election.
Statements from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed the Trump campaign’s claim earlier this month that he was likely targeted by Iran.
“We have observed increased Iranian offensive activity during this election cycle, including influence operations specifically targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the security agencies said.
“This includes recently reported activities to influence former President Trump’s campaign, which the (intelligence community) attributes to Iran,” he said.
The intelligence community is “confident that the Iranians have, through social engineering and other efforts, attempted to gain access to individuals who have direct access to presidential campaigns from both political parties. Such activities, including theft and disclosure, are intended to influence the U.S. electoral process.”
Trump’s campaign said on August 10 that his campaign had been hacked, and blamed “foreign sources” for distributing internal communications and a dossier on fellow candidate J.D. Vance.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States for the sole purpose of interfering with the 2024 election and sowing chaos in our Democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Trump’s campaign alleged that Iran was behind the move, after news outlet Politico reported it had received emails with campaign materials from a source who declined to be identified.
Cheung cited a Microsoft report this week that said Iranian hackers “sent a spear phishing email to a high-ranking presidential campaign official in June.”
The materials obtained by Politico included research on the investigation into Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick.
In the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails — which was blamed on Russia — the party’s internal communications were exposed, including communications about candidate Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who later won the election, was criticized for encouraging the hack.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
