Trump Campaign Attributes Internal Document Hack to Iran; Tehran Denies

Donald Trump's campaign, the Republican nominee for the U.S. presidential election, attributed the hacking of some internal communications to the Iranian government; the Islamic Republic's office at the United Nations has denied this claim. The news of the hacking was first reported on Saturday evening, August 20, by Politico, which stated that it received emails containing these communications and documents from an anonymous account. Following this, Steven Chung, spokesperson for Trump's campaign, stated in a statement that access to these documents was illegally obtained by 'foreign hostile sources intent on interfering in the 2024 elections and creating chaos in our democracy.' He referred to the Iranian government and said, 'The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their regime of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House.' The spokesperson did not provide evidence of Iran's involvement in the hacking of the campaign's internal communications. Reuters noted that during his presidency, Donald Trump had tense relations with Iran, marked by the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, in 2019. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic's representation at the UN rejected these reports, stating: 'The Iranian government has no objective or motivation to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections.' The Islamic Republic had previously reacted similarly to Microsoft's report on attempts by Iranian-linked hackers to cyber-infiltrate U.S. elections. Trump's campaign also referenced a report from Microsoft a day earlier about attempts by hackers linked to the Islamic Republic. Microsoft reported that Iranian hackers attempted to infiltrate the account of a 'senior official' in the U.S. presidential election campaign in June. However, the spokesperson for Trump's campaign did not comment on whether they had contacted Microsoft or legal entities regarding the recent incident and stated that they do not discuss such contacts. The hacking of Trump's internal documents occurred a few weeks after an assassination attempt on him. Initially, Politico reported that it received hacked documents from Trump's campaign through an anonymous email account. According to Politico, the receipt of these emails began on August 1, and over the past few weeks, a person identifying themselves as 'Robert' sent documents that apparently contained internal communications of a senior official in Trump's campaign. Among these documents was a 271-page investigation by Trump's campaign regarding JD Vance, his nominee for the vice presidency. Investigations related to Senator Marco Rubio, who was mentioned as one of Trump's potential vice presidential candidates, were also among the documents obtained by Politico. According to this American website, the anonymous sender of the emails responded to the question of how they obtained these documents by saying that answering this question would 'put them at risk' and legally limit Politico in publishing these documents.