As questions around the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia build, at least one former member of the president’s inner circle appears to have gotten the DNC treatment.
As Politico reports, a data dump making the rounds on the dark web reveals more than 280,000 text messages sent and received by Paul Manafort’s daughter, Andrea. Manafort, the former chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign, resigned in August 2016 after increased scrutiny around his connection to pro-Russia figures in Ukraine.
In the texts, Andrea Manafort states that her father’s “work and payment in Ukraine is legally questionable” and calls the wealth her father accumulated for his involvement with former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovyc “blood money.” Yanukovyc, who faces treason charges in Ukraine, is now in exile in Russia.
The hack appears to have been carried out by accessing a backup of Andrea Manafort’s iPhone data, which was either stored locally on a computer or synced to an iCloud account. Politico’s report doesn’t name the “hacktivist collective” that posted the files, nor does an earlier blog post claiming to have first noticed them. Last week, Politico reported that Manafort had been a blackmail target while serving the Trump campaign, a revelation that appears to be drawn from the same website as the texts.
In August, Paul Manafort appears to have suspected that one of his daughters was hacked in a phishing attempt, warning Andrea, “Your sister has been … hacked. I just got an email from her saying ‘important document’ and sharing a Google spreadsheet … Needless to say, don’t open!”