Trump Falsely Accusing Harris Of Using Hacked Material – Which Is Exactly What He Did In 2016

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Thursday falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris of using material stolen by a foreign adversary to boost her campaign — which is precisely what he himself did in 2016 when his campaign colluded with Russia.

“WHEN DOES KAMALA AND HER CAMPAIGN GO BEFORE A GRAND JURY ON IRAN, IRAN, IRAN?” the coup-attempting former president posted on social media. “MY CAMPAIGN WHEN THROUGH HELL ON THE RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX. THE BIG DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE IRAN/KAMALA CAMPAIGN CORRUPTION CASE IS REAL!”

Trump, however, is lying.

There is no evidence that Harris’ campaign used information hacked from Trump’s campaign by Iran, while Trump himself personally used information hacked from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 nearly every single day of the final month before that election day.

A Harris campaign official said the campaign did not use any of the hacked material, and a joint statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday did not suggest otherwise.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails. There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied,” the statement read.

“We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation,” Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said. “We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost queries on the matter.

Indeed, HuffPost has been asking why Trump willingly accepted help from Russia during the 2016 campaign, throughout Trump’s White House and during his 2024 campaign, over a period of seven years.

The only response it has ever received was from former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who stated that it was not illegal to use stolen information if you were not involved in stealing it. “It was sort of like a gift,” he said in 2018. “And you’re not involved in the illegality of getting it.”

The same day that The Washington Post published a recording of Trump boasting that his celebrity permitted him to grab women by the genitals, the Russia-aligned “WikiLeaks” group began posting emails stolen from Clinton campaign aides by Russian hackers.

Trump — even though he had in August been told by U.S. intelligence officials that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was behind the Clinton campaign hack — began citing the stolen material continuously for the rest of his campaign, starting on Oct. 10 and right through Election Day. At rallies around the country that month, he proclaimed, “WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks,” and “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable! You’ve got to read it!”

The hack-and-release operation was the biggest piece of the Russian influence campaign designed to put Trump in the White House, according to investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In total, Trump referred to WikiLeaks by name 137 times in public appearances and media interviews between Oct. 10 and Election Day, according to PolitiFact. There were another two dozen times when he referred to the emails but did not name the entity.

The leaked emails did not reveal anything particularly nefarious about Clinton or her campaign, but the media’s sustained interest in that correspondence served as a reminder of the earlier FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work when she was secretary of state.

Clinton ended up losing the 2016 election by a total of 77,744 votes across three key states.