EXCLUSIVE: The Trump campaign is still being hacked Email communications from individuals associated with the Trump…

EXCLUSIVE: The Trump campaign is still being hacked Email communications from individuals associated with the Trump campaign have been hacked by malign actors within the last ten days, Popular Information has confirmed. Follow this thread for details. 🧵

2. On September 18, I was sent a message from "Robert," which contained the cover page of a dossier on JD Vance Robert refused to identify himself except to suggest he was the same person who sent stolen Trump campaign materials to other outlets popular.info/p/trump-campai…

3. Robert eventually sent me the full 271-page dossiers on Vance, a 382-page dossier on Gov. Doug Burgum, and a 550-page dossier on Sen. Marco Rubio. Robert boasted that he had "a lot" of other Trump campaign materials.

4. Robert boasted that he had "a lot" of other Trump campaign materials. He sent me a dozen purported emails to and from top Trump campaign staff, including senior advisor Susie Wiles, senior advisor Dan Scavino, and pollster John McLaughlin. The emails covered an 11-month period, from October 2023 to August 2024.

5. Robert also sent a 4-page letter, dated September 15, 2024, from an attorney representing Trump to three individuals at the New York Times. The letter has not been made public by either the Trump campaign or the paper. I provided a copy of the letter to Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor, who confirmed its authenticity with someone at the New York Times who had seen it.

6. The legitimacy of the letter proves that the person or people representing themselves as Robert has stolen electronic communications from people associated with the Trump campaign within the last ten days. popular.info/p/trump-campai…

7. Who or what is "Robert"? According to U.S. intelligence agencies, "Iranian malicious cyber actors" have obtained "stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign."

8. Popular Information will not publish or excerpt the Trump campaign materials provided by Robert. The materials are stolen, and publishing the documents would be a violation of privacy and could encourage future criminal acts.

9. I am making this decision even though my own emails to John Podesta were hacked in 2016 and weaponized against me by the media and the Trump campaign. popular.info/p/trump-campai…

10. I believe that, in some circumstances, the publication of leaked materials can be justified. The Pentagon Papers, for example, were obtained illegally by Daniel Ellsberg, but the public interest in revealing the truth about the Vietnam War outweighed those concerns.

11. The internal Trump campaign documents obtained by Popular Information may be embarrassing or problematic to members of the Trump campaign. Some of the documents have news value. But the stolen materials do not provide the public with any fundamental new insight about Trump or his campaign. So, on balance, the relevant factors argue against publication.

12. Pausing here to say, if you are new to my reporting, you can get it four days a week by subscribing to Popular Information. It's free to sign up. popular.info/subscribe

13. In 2016, Russian hackers were able to access years of emails from the personal account of John Podesta, who was serving as Hillary Clinton's campaign chair. I started working for Podesta in 2001, when I was a first-year law student at Georgetown. By the 2016 election, Podesta had been a colleague and friend for 15 years. So the materials obtained by Russian hackers and published by Wikileaks included correspondence between me and Podesta.

14. Media organizations, including the Washington Post, the Denver Post, the National Review, and others, isolated a handful of my private emails to Podesta and used them as grist for articles that attacked my integrity and professionalism. popular.info/p/trump-campai…

15. I believe these insinuations were unfounded, but I was forced to defend my reputation in the media and with my colleagues at ThinkProgress. I was a bit player in this drama, but it is still disturbing to have your private communications stolen by a foreign government and broadcast by major media outlets.

16. Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times produced dozens of unflattering articles and blog posts about Podesta's emails. Everything was fair game, from Podesta's risotto recipe to his use of the word "prick" to describe a journalist he didn't like.

17. The coverage lasted for weeks because the stolen emails were released by Wikileaks in small batches. There appeared to be little concern that both the content and cadence of political coverage at a critical juncture of the election was being dictated by foreign actors.

18. The media frenzy over Podesta's emails was actively encouraged by Trump and his campaign. On July 26, 2016, Trump publicly implored Russia to acquire Clinton's internal emails. He publicly mentioned WikiLeaks 141 times in the month before the election. "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania on October 10, 2016.

19. It was tempting to use this opportunity to turn the tables on the Trump campaign and publish the stolen campaign materials provided to me by Robert. But I believe that is the wrong approach. popular.info/p/trump-campai…

20. Thus far, the three major outlets that have acknowledged they also received stolen Trump campaign materials from Robert — Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times — have also declined to publish them. None of these outlets have explained why their approach to stolen Trump campaign materials is so different from their approach to stolen Clinton campaign documents. They should be transparent about their decision-making and explain why it has changed dramatically over the last eight years.