The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee called reports that false information was mixed with legitimate documents in the leak of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign communications “a nightmare scenario.”
California Rep. Adam Schiff released a statement on Twitter on Saturday calling the mixture of fake and real information in a leak from hacked documents his greatest fear regarding the Russian influence campaign on the American presidential election. It appears that scenario is instead taking place in France.
Worst fear during Russia hack in our election was they would dump fakes among real documents. Reportedly, this is now happening with Macron. pic.twitter.com/k4UxiFnYHq
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 6, 2017
“Imagine the impact on an election if hackers inserted false information into a real email that suggested illegality by a candidate, and then published the document,” Schiff said. “If this was done close to an election, there would be no opportunity to disprove the forgery and who would believe the victim even if they could?
“In France with Macron’s campaign, that nightmare scenario may be playing out, with hackers reportedly mixing fake documents with the real and then dumping them,” he added.
Schiff said he’s still waiting for confirmation from French intelligence that forged information is, in fact, included in the leaks as alleged by Macron’s campaign. But, if the allegations are true, he said it “would represent yet another dangerous escalation of cyber interference in a Western nation’s democracy.”
American intelligence officials have determined Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election and have warned the Kremlin plans to do the same in elections throughout Europe.
Macron is widely seen to be a pro-European Union candidate who would continue much of France’s foreign policy. However, his opponent Marine Le Pen is an ally of Russia and has even visited Russian President Vladimir Putin during the campaign.
