The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board announced that it would investigate how Chinese hackers breached the campaigns of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The message from the DHS came Monday, per a Wall Street Journal report, though the agency did not specify when the investigation would begin.
“The Cyber Safety Review Board will initiate a review of this incident at the appropriate time,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told the outlet.
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The news comes after the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed Friday that Chinese hackers had breached both presidential campaigns in a “malicious” act.
The scope of the Chinese hacking campaign, dubbed “the Salt Typhoon,” has widened as investigations have unraveled in recent weeks. Roughly 40 people are believed to have been targeted as of Monday, according to Politico.
In addition to the Trump and Harris campaigns, the Salt Typhoon targeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) staff and other members of the Biden administration. It compromised multiple telecommunications companies, including Verizon Communications, AT&T, and Lumen.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) faced data breaches while using Verizon phone systems.
The former president’s campaign has compared the Chinese hack to Iran’s cyberattack against Trump earlier this year. Near the beginning of August, Iranian hackers distributed documents gleaned from a data breach on the Trump campaign to major media outlets, though they declined to publish the 271-page dossier on Vance.
While it remains unclear what information the Chinese hackers gathered from the cyberattack, Trump campaign staff members have said that both China and Iran’s hacks amount to “election interference.” Meanwhile, top GOP officials have accused federal investigators of stonewalling investigations into the Iran election interference plot.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) suggested Sunday that “anti-Trump political bias has corrupted the Biden administration’s FBI’s decision-making” when it came to the agency’s investigation into the scope of the Iranian cyberattack.
“Today, on the eve of the presidential election, the FBI is doubling down on its politicization and corruption,” Stefanik wrote Sunday in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal before claiming that the agency is “willfully covering up” information about Iranian influence in the 2024 presidential election.
When asked for comment about whether it is concerned that the DHS might operate with similar alleged political bias in its latest investigation into China’s cyberattack, the Trump campaign continued to raise fears that the Biden administration is enabling nefarious foreign actors to attack the former president.
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“This is the continuation of election interference by Kamala Harris and Democrats who will stop at nothing, including emboldening China and Iran attacking critical American infrastructure, to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House. Their dangerous and violent rhetoric has given permission to those who wish to harm President Trump,” Steven Cheung, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, told the Washington Examiner.
“They have now stood by and allowed major foreign adversaries to attack us in order to illegally help Kamala because they know she represents a weak American who will always bow down. Whereas, President Trump will actually stand up against our enemies and defend the United States from any and all aggression,” Cheung continued.
