The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States announced on Monday (August 12th) that they are investigating the theft of sensitive documents from former President Trump’s campaign team during a cyber intrusion. Just days before, the campaign team had disclosed that they had been attacked by Iranian hackers.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the FBI released a brief statement on Monday stating, “We can confirm that the FBI is investigating this matter.”
The Trump campaign team did not provide specific evidence of Iranian involvement in this cyber attack, but this claim came shortly after Microsoft released a report detailing foreign agents attempting to interfere in the 2024 U.S. election activities. The report cited an example of an Iranian military intelligence unit sending spear-phishing emails in June, which were sent from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor to a senior official of the presidential campaign team.
The U.S. political news website Politico reported last Saturday that it had been receiving emails from an anonymous account since July 22nd. The emails contained a document that appeared to be a research file related to a vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. The document was dated February 23rd, nearly five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign team, stated that “these documents were obtained illegally” and pointed out that the intention was to “interfere in the 2024 election and sow chaos in our democratic process.”
When asked about the Trump campaign team’s claims, members of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations denied any involvement by the Iranian government in the matter.
However, Microsoft pointed out in the report that “foreign malicious influence in the 2024 U.S. election began slowly but has steadily accelerated over the past six months, initially due to actions by Russia but more recently due to activities by Iran.”