Internal material from Donald Trump’s campaign team was leaked to several media outlets, including security information about JD Vance. However, media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post refrained from publishing details.
Politico was the first site to report on the leak on Saturday, writing that it had received emails from an anonymous account containing documents from the campaign. On July 22, the portal then received emails from an AOL account identified only as “Robert,” including a 271-page research dossier on Vance.
The New York Times reported that the newspaper also received a “similar, if not identical, trove of data” from an anonymous source who was allegedly the same Politico informant as the Washington Post.
However, none of the media outlets has decided to publish the documents in full, especially the apparently extensive dossier on Trump’s vice presidential candidate. They have opted for a vague description of the content they have received.
This is a stark contrast to the coverage of the 2016 presidential election, when a Russian hacker exposed private emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. News organizations relentlessly reported on the information released through Wikileaks.
The Trump campaign’s response to the leak this time was to point to a Microsoft report on Friday that said a hacking group run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence service had gained access to the account of a senior presidential campaign official.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States. Their goal was to influence the 2024 election and sow chaos in our democratic process,” Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement.
