Trump election campaign accuses Iran of hacking attack

US presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Iran of hacking his campaign.

The Republican nominee’s campaign team issued a statement late on Saturday claiming that the Iranian government stole and distributed sensitive internal documents. The accusation came after Microsoft issued a report detailing foreign attempts to interfere in this year’s US election campaign.

The campaign team cited past tensions between Trump and Iran but did not provide direct evidence.

“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,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.

Late on Saturday, Trump posted on his Truth Social app that Microsoft had informed the campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites, but said they were “only able to get publicly available information”.

A report by Politico just ahead of the accusation said an anonymous source had offered to supply to the US outlet documents from inside Trump’s operation, including a report about running mate JD Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities”.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council said in a statement that it takes any report of foreign interference “extremely seriously” and condemns any entity that attempts to undermine US democratic institutions.Microsoft’s report stated that “foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months, due initially to Russian operations but more recently from Iranian activity”.

Iran’s permanent mission to the UN in New York said in an email that “the Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election”.

“We do not accord any credence to such reports,” it said in response to the Trump campaign’s allegations.

Iran’s UN mission told the Reuters news agency its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces”, and that it had no plans to launch such cyberattacks.

Tehran has poor relations with Trump. During his presidency, the US killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and withdrew from a multilateral Iran nuclear deal.

“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said.

The suspect in Trump’s assassination attempt in July had no ties to Iran, but a CNN report last month stated that US intelligence had uncovered an Iranian plot against Trump. Iran denied the charges.

The US Department of Justice this past week unsealed criminal charges against Pakistani national Asif Merchant, with ties to Iran and who is alleged to have plotted assassination attempts against political figures in the US, including Trump.