The Trump campaign is alleging that it was hacked by foreign sources hostile to the U.S. after a report from Microsoft Corp. on Friday disclosed Iran’s efforts to target the 2024 U.S. election, including proof that Iranian actors had infiltrated an unnamed presidential campaign.

The idea that the Trump campaign may have been hacked first came to light after Politico revealed that it had been receiving emails from July 22 onward from an AOL account from a user named “Robert.” They contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official. The documents received by Politico included a dossier put together by the campaign on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, which the publication confirmed was authentic.

The sender further claimed to have a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.” When asked how they had obtained the documents, the person going by the name of Robert responded by saying, “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from” and “any answer to this question will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”

Grounds that could restrict Politico from publishing the documents include their being stolen in a hack by a nefarious nation-state actor.

Microsoft then enters the picture with a thorough report that details various activities undertaken by parts of the Iranian regime and there’s one part that heavily suggests that the Iranians did indeed hack the Trump campaign.

According to Microsoft, a group connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of Iran’s military, “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” The report continues that “the email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link.”

That’s either the world’s biggest coincidence, or it’s describing the missing parts of the story from the person shopping the documents to Politico on how it obtained “internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official.”

Though Microsoft has not officially confirmed the link to the public, former president Trump claimed on Truth Social on Saturday that Microsoft has privately confirmed the link. “They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” Trump wrote. “Iran and others will stop at nothing because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long.”

Iran’s activities, according to Microsoft, were not limited to the former president. Various parts of the regime were found to be targeting swing voters with fake news sites, running influence operations on the ground that could include inciting violence and also targeting a county-level employee in a swing state.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram