Media outlets and voters alike are being warned by the French election campaign commission not to share information from emails and documents hacked from presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign.
USA Today reported the commission said much of the information released from Macron’s campaign could be fraudulent and was obtained illegally.
While some of the tens of thousands of documents are real, some fraudulent documents were mixed into the leak, according to Macron’s campaign. The commission warned people could face criminal charges if they share the information before Sunday’s vote.
Free speech protections in France are weaker than in the United States and the country has a 44-hour media blackout on elections before a vote. The period is meant to allow the French people to reflect on what they’ve learned in the campaign before they cast their ballot. The blackout starts at midnight Saturday and lasts until polling stations are closed Sunday.
The law bars any campaigning and media coverage that could be seen as swinging the election. The leak came just before the blackout took effect on Friday, preventing Macron and Marine Le Pen, the other French presidential candidate. Macron’s political movement, En Marche, issued a statement confirming the hack just before the blackout.
The identity of the hackers is not known, but speculation is rampant that the Russian government played a role in the leak. American intelligence officers have determined Russia ran a similar influence campaign on the 2016 election and was working on doing the same thing in European elections.
WikiLeaks, identified by American intelligence as working with Russia to release emails related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, provided links to the Macron leak Friday night.
