Roger Stone targeted in Trump email hacking scheme as campaign blames Iran for document dump

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Stone — who was convicted for lying to Congress in 2019 about efforts to dig up dirt about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign — was informed by the FBI as well as Microsoft that his email account was compromised by a “Foreign State Actor,” who sent messages containing a link that could give hackers access to that person’s computer. Last week, Microsoft reported that an Iranian group, believed to be connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sent a phishing email in June to “a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” who is now believed to be Stone. We’ve since notified those targeted.” One day later, Trump claimed that Microsoft had told his campaign that “one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government — Never a nice thing to do!” He said that would-be hackers obtained only “publicly available information,” and appeared to blame President Joe Biden’s administration for the alleged attack. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed that the 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.” The latest revelations forecast an already-turbulent election cycle with less than three months until Election Day, with echoes of Russian and Iranian attempts to interfere with US elections in 2016 and 2020, respectively.