‘It was Iran,’ Trump says of presidential campaign hack

In his first public comments since his campaign revealed it had been hacked, former President Donald Trump blamed Iran for the compromise and praised the FBI’s ongoing probe of the breach.

“They are looking at it and they’re doing it very professionally and it looks like it’s Iran,” Trump told reporters as he arrived to cast his vote in Florida’s primary.

However, he declined to say what the agency has shared with him.

“I don’t want to say exactly, but it was Iran,” Trump said.

“Iran is no friend of mine, a lot of bad signals get sent,” he later added.

The FBI confirmed on Monday that it had launched an investigation of the incident after the campaign admitted it had breached, which followed several media outlets receiving internal Trump documents from an anonymous account. 

The agency began its probe in June and is also examining spear-phishing attempts against Biden-Harris campaign officials.

The revelations came after a report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center released last week detailed how operatives linked to Tehran targeted an unnamed presidential campaign, among other covert efforts to influence the race.

Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned Tehran would likely interfere in the upcoming election and that it had developed preference for the Democratic candidate, based on the perception that they would be less likely to increase tensions with the U.S..

“The reason is because I was strong on Iran and I was protecting people in the Middle East that maybe they aren’t so happy about,” Trump told reporters. “That’s what it seems to be, Iran.”

Iran has denied any involvement in the hack.