Chinese hackers gained access to the Republican National Committee’s email system during the 2024 presidential campaign in a serious security breach, according to a report.
As the committee was preparing to host the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee last July, Microsoft reportedly reached out to top officials and warned them that hackers had access to the RNC’s email system for months, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
The hackers wanted inside information about how the Republican party was planning to address Taiwan in its party platform, according to the outlet.
The revelations are detailed in a new book titled Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power by reporter Alex Isenstadt.
After learning of the hack, according to the Journal, officials and Trump’s campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita did not alert the FBI about the breach over concerns that it would leak to the media.
Officials first learned of the hack just days before the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
It was not clear how many emails had been accessed.
The Independent has contacted the RNC for comment.
“China firmly opposes and combats cyberattacks and cyber theft in all forms,” a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told the outlet.
At the end of December 2024, the U.S. Treasury was hacked by suspected Chinese actors in a similar incident where government workstations and unclassified documents were accessed, officials said at the time.
The department made the revelation after being notified earlier that month by third-party software provider BeyondTrust that the hackers had accessed a security key to get past safety measures, The Washington Post reported.
The Treasury notified the Senate Banking Committee of the breach in a letter viewed by several media outlets. It called the breach a “major incident”. Department policy categorizes nation state hacking incidents as “major”, according to the letter.
The department didn’t say how many workstations had been accessed or what kind of documents the hackers could have obtained. But in its letter to lawmakers, the department said “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.”
The Chinese embassy denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, tensions between the two nations are high following Trump’s policy of imposing tariffs on rival nations. It reignited the first trade war of his new presidency earlier this month after China retaliated with its own wave of levies.
The foreign ministry in Beijing imposed 15 percent tariffs on coal and liquefied natural gas, while oil and agricultural equipment from the U.S. will face a 10 percent levy.
