Trump campaign claims it was hacked by ‘foreign sources’
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is claiming it was hacked by “foreign sources” with the intent to interfere in the upcoming election.
The Trump campaign statement cited a report published by Microsoft on Friday, which said, “In June 2024, Mint Sandstorm — a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit — sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor. The phishing email contained a fake forward with a hyperlink that directs traffic through an actor-controlled domain before redirecting to the listed domain.”
The IRGC is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces.
Microsoft does not identify the presidential campaign in its report. Microsoft has also not responded to ABC News’ request for more information.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson deferred to the Justice Department when asked for comment on the allegations.
“The Biden-Harris Administration strongly condemns any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions,” the spokesperson said.
They added that they take any reports of “such activity extremely seriously.”
The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice declined to comment.
Outside of the Trump campaign statement, ABC News has not confirmed the campaign was hacked by foreign sources with the intent to interfere in the election.
The Secret Service referred ABC News to the Trump campaign and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks, Michelle Stoddart and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — After the supreme leader of Iran signaled a willingness to return to nuclear negotiations with the United States, the Biden administration cast doubt on the likelihood of resuming talks in the near future.
“We will judge Iran’s leadership by their actions, not their words,” a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
“If Iran wants to demonstrate seriousness or a new approach, they should stop nuclear escalations and start meaningfully cooperating with the IAEA,” they added, referencing the International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental watchdog that Tehran has often subverted.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave Iran’s newly installed president, reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, the go-ahead to relaunch talks with the U.S. on Tuesday while warning the country’s government against putting any trust in Washington.
“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations,” Khamenei said, according to the official transcript of his remarks. “There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them.”
The State Department spokesperson said the administration still saw a negotiated solution as the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear program, but that Iran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA and its escalatory actions made diplomacy impossible.
“We are far away from anything like that right now,” they said.
Members of the administration also largely view the prospect of returning to indirect talks with Iran as a politically unfavorable step that could prove detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’ and other Democrats’ chances at winning in November, several officials told ABC News.
The doubtful outlook for resuscitating negotiations in the coming months further diminishes the already low odds of securing a deal with Iran before President Joe Biden’s time in the White House comes to an end, all but pushing his promise to negotiate a “longer and stronger” agreement out of reach.
Khamenei’s comments Tuesday echo the position he took around the time Tehran signed off on the 2015 nuclear pact known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA — a landmark accord that granted Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear program.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” and reimposing financial restrictions on Iran.
In the years since, Khamenei’s public comments on the matter have oscillated between encouraging negotiations with the U.S. and outright dismissing the possibility of a renewed pact.
Foreign policy observers say the upcoming U.S. presidential election is injecting even more uncertainty into the prospects of reaching another nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump has previously made unsubstantiated claims that Iran was ready to accept conditions that were highly favorable to the U.S. at the end of his term and that he was “ready to make a deal.” But on the campaign trail, Trump — a sworn enemy of the Iranian regime — has taken an increasingly hawkish stance against the country, which reportedly carried out a cyberattack targeting his campaign and has plotted against him and his former Cabinet officials.
Harris has also promised to take an aggressive approach to curbing Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East, but she supported the JCPOA, as well as the current administration’s efforts to cut a new deal. However, she has not clearly said whether she would attempt to pick up where Biden left off.
Indirect talks with Iran under the Biden administration officially kicked off in April 2021. Despite mediators’ initial optimism, talks eventually sputtered out after multiple rounds of stop-start diplomacy failed to move both sides toward an agreement.
So far, Biden has made good on another of his major promises regarding Iran: his declaration that the country would “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”
However, officials within his administration say Tehran has made substantial progress toward that goal in recent years.
In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Iran was likely only “one or two weeks away” from having breakout capacity to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, and that the U.S. was watching “very, very carefully” to see whether the country would move toward weaponizing its nuclear program, a step the administration says the regime has not yet taken.
The U.S. shutting down the possibility of any renewed talks with Iran right now comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s preemptive strike Saturday night on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — At his first rally since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid, former President Donald Trump rallied his supporters against Vice President Kamala Harris, going after her record on immigration, health care, and the environment, painting her as an “ultra liberal” candidate.
“Just like crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is unfit to lead. She’s unfit to lead, she’ll destroy our country in a year, this country will be destroyed,” Trump said at his rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday.
As Trump referenced Harris’ name dozens of times throughout his nearly 1.5-hour-long speech, he mispronounced her first name every single time.
Though Trump had previously called for unity in the wake of the attempt on his life by a gunman at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, two weeks ago, Trump put a nail in the coffin on his short-lived “nice” campaign.
“They’re very dangerous people — when you’re dealing with them, you can’t be so nice … If you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that OK?” Trump said about Biden and Harris, which was followed by the crowd cheering, “Fight, fight, fight.”
The former president took a victory lap about Biden’s dropout, accusing Democrats of pushing him out of office due to his low poll numbers.
“As you know, three days ago, we officially defeated the worst president in the history of our country, Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump said. “So now we have a new victim to defeat. Lyin’ Kamala Harris — Lyin’, apostrophe — the most incompetent and far left vice president in American history.”
Trump’s rally comes as Harris attacked him and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, on Tuesday, at her first presidential campaign event in battleground Wisconsin, on the issue of abortion and Project 2025, the conservative presidential transition blueprint fronted by the Heritage Foundation.
“We’ll stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have the government tell them what to do,” Harris said to raucous applause. “And when Congress passes the law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.”
In Biden’s address to the nation on Wednesday about his decision to exit the race, the president said, “There’s a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices and yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”
The president did not address ongoing Republican criticisms about his fitness to serve.
Throughout Trump’s speech, he attempted to flesh out numerous attacks on Harris, specifically focusing on her handling of immigration issues, which he argued should disqualify her from running for the nation’s highest office.
“Kamala’s deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying. She shouldn’t even be allowed to run for president what she’s done,” accused Trump.
In March of 2021, Biden appointed Harris to oversee, lead, and coordinate diplomatic talks with Northern Triangle countries to address the root causes of migration. Republicans quickly labeled that assignment as the “border czar,” though Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is in charge of border oversight.
So far on the campaign trail, Harris has focused on going after Trump’s record concerning reproductive rights, directly blaming him for the rollback of abortion access for women. Trump attempted to respond to that argument by labeling Harris as a radical on abortion, pushing unfounded claims that she supports late-term abortions.
And as the Harris campaign paints the election as one between a prosecutor and felon, Trump on Wednesday called her “one of the worst prosecutors” who “destroyed San Francisco.”
“Their campaign says, ‘I’m the prosecutor and he is the convicted felon.’ That’s their campaign. I don’t think people are gonna buy it,” Trump said, touting he won the Florida classified documents case.
Going through her record as California attorney general, Trump criticized her past support for bail reform which he argued made her soft on crime. Hailing from California, Trump typecasted Harris as an extreme liberal, highlighting her support for the Green New Deal and a ban on fracking.
The Harris campaign declared that Trump’s attacks on Harris signaled his message of unity following his assassination attempt.
“Unity is over for Donald Trump — he is back with an unhinged, weird, and rambling speech,” Harris for President spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “But the American people won’t be fooled or distracted.”
(WASHINGTON) — March For Our Lives, the youth-led organization dedicated to ending gun violence following the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting, will be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — the first time the organization has ever endorsed a political candidate, and an indicator of the mounting youth support for the vice president.
“As one of the largest youth-led movements in the nation, we are clear-eyed about the challenge ahead, and we believe that Kamala Harris is uniquely suited to meet this moment,” the group said in a news release shared first with ABC News.
The group goes on to say that Harris is the right candidate to meet the political moment the country currently finds itself in.
“We need an ardent defender of democracy, a gun violence prevention champion, and a leader who will listen to young people, give us a seat at the table, and fight for our future. We believe that Kamala Harris is that candidate and the right person to stand up for us and fight for the country we deserve,” the news release read.
The organization’s endorsement of Harris comes as she oversees the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and has met regularly with advocates and survivors of gun violence.
In an interview with ABC News, Natalie Fall, executive director of March For Our Lives, said there’s energy brewing from youth voters with Harris now being the presumptive Democratic nominee that wasn’t seen before with President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Biden announced Sunday that will not be running for reelection in the 2024 race — instead endorsing Harris for the job.
“We see a lot of energy around Vice President Harris in this election; there’s no denying that. I think everybody’s seeing it right now,” Fall said to ABC News.
“I just think young people in particular didn’t really see themselves represented or reflected in the Biden ticket in the way that they wanted. It’s not to say that President Biden hasn’t had great accomplishments … But I think we need someone who can meet this moment and who is up to the challenge of taking Donald Trump to task and really defeating his effort to erode all of our institutions and our democracy,” she added.
The coveted youth vote is something both Harris and former President Donald Trump will seek as November approaches — especially in an election that’s expected to be a close contest.
ABC News has reached out to the Trump campaign for specifics on their efforts to appeal to youth voters.
Falls told ABC News that March For Our Lives will mobilize young voters to cast ballots for Harris and other down-ballot candidates through door-knocking, phone banking and creative campaigns.
The group’s endorsement comes as youth voters and organizations mobilize behind Harris.
Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led organization that engages young Americans in politics and government, announced on Sunday their endorsement of Harris and their efforts to mobilize youth voters behind her.
Following their announcement, the group said it raised $125,000 on Sunday — its best fundraising day ever.
“There’s so much authentic excitement surrounding Vice President Harris online and on the ground, and now we’re channeling that into political action,” Jack Lobel, press secretary for Voters of Tomorrow, said to ABC News in an interview.
Lobel said the excitement and energy surrounding Harris’ campaign is something that likely intimidates Trump and his political operation.
“It’s not just memes; it is record-breaking fundraising hauls, tens of thousands of people joining Zoom calls to organize, people talking to their friends about voting, and Voters of Tomorrow are channeling this momentum to ensure we have record youth voter turnout in November,” he said.