It was 10 days ago when Donald Trump’s campaign said that it had been hacked by an Iranian group in June. As it turns out, the claims were apparently true. NBC News reported:
The U.S. government has formally endorsed former President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran hacked his campaign. In a joint statement Monday, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Iran was behind attempts this year to hack presidential campaigns of both political parties.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns,” the agencies said in the statement.
The fact that the joint statement referenced the “campaigns” was notable in part because Team Trump apparently wasn’t the only target. NBC News’ report added, “The same hackers were alleged by Google to have targeted the Biden-Harris campaign before President Joe Biden ended his run for re-election, but it’s not clear whether they were breached. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign previously said it had no indication it was hacked.”
Iran, meanwhile, has denied any wrongdoing.
To date, news organizations have not published any of the information obtained from Trump’s political operation, which is certainly in line with the Republican campaign’s appeals.
“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,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement when the allegations first reached the public.
Team Trump added, “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
At first blush, that statement seemed largely unremarkable. In fact, what Cheung claimed turned out to be true: Team Trump was breached; documents were obtained illegally; the thieves were apparently foreign adversaries; and their goal was to interfere in an American presidential election.
There is, however, a disconnect between the message and the messenger. As Robert Schlesinger explained in a piece for The New Republic:
I know 2016 was an awfully long time ago — almost a decade, which in Trump years feels like several lifetimes — but one doesn’t have to dig too deeply in the memory hole to recall that Trump then took a more sanguine view of foreign interference. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing [from Hillary Clinton’s personal server], I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said in a news conference that July. He later tried to dismiss the comment as a joke, but you know who took it seriously? Russia. On or around that day, according to a subsequent indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller, Russia started trying to find those emails.
Quite right. In 2016, when it was Russia targeting the U.S. presidential election and exposing materials stolen from Democratic computers, Trump celebrated WikiLeaks, cheered on his benefactors in Moscow and publicly urged Americans to embrace the hack and its ill-gotten gains.
At the time, it was Democrats who issued statements such as, “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
And it was Trump who effectively said, “I don’t care.”
As far as the Republican is concerned, documents obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to sow chaos throughout our democratic process, must be rejected — unless they benefit his quest for power.
