Iran responsible for Trump campaign hack, intel agencies say

Intelligence agencies issued a joint statement on Monday saying Iran recently gained unauthorized access to the internal communications of former President Donald Trump‘s campaign.

The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that, in addition to being able to attribute the Trump campaign hack to Iran, they were “confident” that Iranians have made other attempts to target both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.

“The IC is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the Presidential campaigns of both political parties,” the agencies said. “Such activity, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process.”

The statement marks the first time the intelligence community has said Iran was behind the hack after the Trump campaign said earlier this month that it believed Iranians were responsible for it.

The matter came to light on Aug. 10, when multiple media outlets reported that they had recently received from an anonymous source private Trump campaign materials. The documents included a dossier the Trump campaign compiled as part of its research on vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and a senior campaign official’s communications, the outlets said.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said at the time that “hostile” foreign entities had unlawfully obtained the materials and that Microsoft discovered Iranians had gained unauthorized access to a presidential campaign account.

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Cheung said in a statement, adding that “a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee.”

The FBI, ODNI, and CISA also said that the behavior from Iran, a major U.S. adversary, was not new but that the country’s efforts to affect this year’s U.S. elections had become “increasingly aggressive.”

“Iran perceives this year’s elections to be particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests, increasing Tehran’s inclination to try to shape the outcome,” the agencies said.

They noted that the FBI was primarily responsible for combating foreign election interference and that the bureau was actively investigating election-related activity from Iran, as well as Russia.

The FBI declined to comment further on its investigation.

The three outlets that reported receiving the Trump campaign materials, Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, all opted against publishing the documents.

The decision has drawn criticism from some, such as Biden policy adviser Neera Tanden, who argued the outlets had a “double standard” on hacked material after they reported on documents anonymously published to WikiLeaks from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.