U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is to blame for hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign

U.S. intelligence officials said Monday that Iran is responsible for the hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It was the first U.S. government attribution of responsibility for a cyber intrusion that the Republican nominee had previously linked to Tehran.

The FBI and other federal agencies said Iran perceived this year’s presidential election to be particularly consequential and was determined through the hacking operation and other activities to interfere in American politics and “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”

“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns,” said a joint statement from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The statement said the Iranian hackers have “sought access to individuals with direct access to the Presidential campaigns of both political parties.” The FBI has been investigating attempts to gain access to Democrat Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Trump’s presidential campaign declared this month that it had been hacked by Iran.

“Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s Communications Director, said in a statement Aug. 10 announcing that the campaign had been hacked.

On Aug. 9, Microsoft issued a report stating that Iranian hackers tried to penetrate the account of an official with one of the presidential campaigns, but did not disclose additional details. On Saturday, the Trump campaign announced it had been hacked, though it also did not identify the individual whose account was breached. It did so after POLITICO said it had been contacted by an unknown source peddling what was represented to be internal documents from the campaign.

Iran denied being involved in any hack. On Aug. 12, the FBI said in a statement it was investigating the matter.

Microsoft’s report said an Iranian military intelligence unit had sent “a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” Spear-phishing is a form of cyberattack in which an attacker poses as a known or trusted sender, often to install malware or gather sensitive information.

The tech company wouldn’t disclose which campaign or adviser was targeted, but said it had notified them. Since then, both Trump and a longtime friend and adviser of the former President, Roger Stone, have said they were contacted by Microsoft related to suspected cyber intrusions.

“We were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government – Never a nice thing to do!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

Grant Smith, an attorney for Stone, said his client “was contacted by Microsoft and the FBI regarding this matter and continues to cooperate with these organizations.” He declined further comment.

The position of Trump’s current campaign is a striking change from 2016, when the former President heartily embraced the Russian hacking of his opponent Hillary Clinton’s aides and the Democratic National Committee.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said during a press conference in his 2016 presidential run, when Clinton’s deleted personal emails were a hot topic, “I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

“I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said back then.

In 2016, intelligence officials said Russian hackers obtained thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the personal account of Clinton’s campaign Chairman, John Podesta. The initial batches came out in the summer, as Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination.

That was when Trump encouraged Russia to find his rival’s personal emails. He later argued he was joking.

The hacked material was released through third parties, including the online site Wikileaks, which began to publish daily tranches of Democratic documents in October, just after a videotape of Trump bragging about how he’d sexually assaulted women was disclosed.

Trump routinely touted the Democratic leaks at his campaign rallies, including declaring at one: “I love Wikileaks.”

The leaked documents received ample news coverage, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote the book “Cyberwar” on the 2016 hacking, said she found that coverage was what won the election for Trump.

“2016 was not an instance of which journalists should be proud,” Jamieson said in an interview Monday, adding that the greatest question is how news organizations apply their standards to whatever material finds itself in the public domain.

“That Trump is saying what is electorally convenient is not a surprise,” Jamieson said. “This is not a person for whom inconsistency is a concern.”

Nick Merrill was a spokesman for Clinton’s 2016 campaign and pushed back against publication of the hacked documents at the time. On Monday, he noted the Trump campaign was in a similar role this time.

“In addition to the characteristic hypocrisy, they just spent three weeks trying to explain they’re not weird,” Merrill said via text. “And I’d imagine that sharing their internal correspondence is going to help dispel that notion.”

Asked if that meant he now thought hacked materials should be published, Merrill replied: “A precedent has been set here. I’m not passing judgment on it.”

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Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. Republished with permission.