An alleged Iranian hack on Donald Trump’s campaign also saw hackers breach the email account of the longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, an adviser of the former president, according to reports.
CNN reported that hackers had compromised Stone’s email address and had then used his account to “try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official”. The Washington Post reported that phishing emails were sent to Trump officials from Stone’s account.
The news that Stone had been hacked came after Politico revealed it had received emails from an anonymous AOL account which contained a 271-page dossier about JD Vance, Trump’s running mate for November’s presidential election, along with other documents. The former president’s campaign subsequently claimed that Iran was responsible for the hack and distribution of the documents, with a spokesperson saying on Saturday that hackers had obtained access to the account of a “high-ranking official”.
The FBI said this week it was investigating alleged hacking attempts by Iran which targeted both the campaigns of Trump and Kamala Harris, although a spokesperson for the US vice-president said their team was “not aware of any security breaches of our systems”.
The involvement of Roger Stone is curious given he was found guilty of seven felony charges in 2019 in a case that focused on WikiLeaks’ release of damaging emails about Hillary Clinton in the run up to the 2016 election that she lost to Trump. Stone was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, but Trump commuted the sentence during his presidency.
CNN reported that Stone had been informed by Microsoft and the FBI that his email had been hacked by a “foreign state actor”. The intention was to use Stone’s account “to phish officials in the Trump campaign into opening a link that would give perpetrators access to that person’s computer”, CNN said, citing anonymous sources.
“I was informed by the authorities that a couple of my personal email accounts have been compromised,” Stone told the Washington Post. “I really don’t know more about it. And I’m cooperating. It’s all very strange.”
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump showed support for foreign states publishing hacked documents. At a press conference that July, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” – a reference to messages sent and received from a private account held by Clinton while she was secretary of state during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Clinton turned over 33,000 emails to the state department for review, and in 2019 the department said it had found “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information”.
