MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera spoke to NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian on Tuesday about the ongoing FBI investigation into alleged hacking of the 2024 presidential campaigns and the recent revelation that Trump campaign material was leaked to various media outlets, which are refusing to publish the leaked info.
“Now to new developments in the alleged hack on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The FBI now confirms it is investigating efforts to hack both the Trump and Harris campaigns, including attempts to hack three Biden, Harris campaign staffers and former Trump adviser Roger Stone,” Cabrera began, adding:
The Trump campaign says it was hacked in June. The FBI still hasn’t confirmed that, or whether any of the attempted hacks were actually successful. NBC’s Ken Dilanian is joining us now. So, Ken, walk us through this. The FBI says there were efforts to hack that campaign, but they haven’t said whether those efforts worked?
Dilanian replied, “Well, in one case, they believe it worked on. The FBI is investigating, as you said, attempts to hack into the email accounts of officials on both campaigns, including three Biden-Harris staffers and one Trump campaign official. And there’s no indication that the attempts against the Harris campaign were successful. And in fact, the campaign tells us it sees no evidence of a cyber breach.”
“Now, in the case of the Trump campaign, Mr. Trump himself has said that a campaign website was hacked by Iran, and former Trump adviser Roger Stone is saying that authorities told him his email accounts were compromised. Also, several news organizations have said they were offered what appear to be internal campaign Trump campaign documents. So it does look like the hack of the Trump campaign was at least somewhat successful,” reported Dilanianm, adding:
Now, the FBI isn’t saying this was Iran, but Microsoft’s intelligence unit said Friday that an Iranian government linked group tried to hack into an unnamed presidential campaign, and U.S. intelligence officials have been saying for a while now that Iran is trying to influence the election and wants Trump to lose. So the bottom line it does appear that a foreign government is once again attempting a hack-and-dump operation to influence the presidential election, just as we saw when the Russians hacked the Democrats in 2016.
“Ken you covered Roger Stone for years? What did you make of the fact that he specifically is involved here, after he was at the center of so many conversations about leaks back in 2016?” Cabrera asked.
“Yeah, the irony could not be thicker. Obviously, multiple investigations found that Roger Stone was in secret communication with Wikileaks back in 2016 and did everything he could to help the Trump campaign exploit that hack of the Democrats by Russian spies. And, of course, Trump himself urged Russia, we all remember, to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, and he celebrated those Wikileaks disclosures that everyone knew at the time came from a Russian hack,” Dilanian noted, concluding:
But now the Trump campaign is urging news organizations not to use any documents stolen by a foreign government in what some see as breathtaking hypocrisy. And so far, you know, news organizations do not appear to have published any internal Trump documents. But nothing is stopping the hackers from posting them on the web somewhere, which will create a real dilemma for the media if the documents are newsworthy. I mean, nobody wants to help a foreign government influence the election, but if secret documents are leaked onto the internet, lots of people are going to see them regardless of what the media does on them.
Watch the full clip above via MSNBC.
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