Trump falsely accuses Harris of using hacked material – which he did in 2016

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump on Thursday falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris of using materials stolen from a foreign adversary to promote her campaign – and that is exactly what he himself did in 2016 when his campaign colluded with Russia.

“WHEN WILL KAMALA AND HER CAMPAIGN GO BEFORE A GRAND JURY ON IRAN, IRAN, IRAN?” the former coup-attempted president posted on social media. “MY CAMPAIGN IS GOING THROUGH HELL ON RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA. THE BIG DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE CORRUPTION CASE IN THE IRAN/KAMALA CAMPAIGN AREA IS REALISTIC!”

But Trump is lying.

There is no evidence that Harris' campaign used information hacked by Iran from Trump's campaign. Trump himself, however, used hacked information from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign nearly every day in the last month before Election Day.

A Harris campaign official said the campaign did not use any of the hacked materials, but a joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday suggested otherwise.

“Iranian cybercriminals sent unsolicited emails in late June and early July to individuals then associated with President Biden's campaign. The emails contained an excerpt of stolen, non-public material from former President Trump's campaign. There is currently no information to indicate that these recipients responded,” the statement said.

“We have been working with appropriate law enforcement authorities since we learned that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation,” said Morgan Finkelstein, spokeswoman for the Harris campaign. “We are not aware of any material sent directly to the campaign; some individuals were targeted via email with what appeared to be spam or phishing attempts.”

Trump's campaign team did not respond to HuffPost's inquiries about the matter.

In fact, HuffPost asked why Trump willingly accepted help from Russia during his 2016 campaign, throughout his time in the White House, and during his 2024 campaign – a period spanning seven years.

The only response it ever received came from former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who explained that it was not illegal to use stolen information if you were not involved in the theft. “It was something like a gift,” he said in 2018. “And you are not involved in the illegality of getting it.”

The same day that the Washington Post published a recording of Trump boasting that his fame allowed him to grope women's genitals, the Russia-aligned WikiLeaks group began publishing emails that Russian hackers had stolen from Clinton campaign aides.

Despite U.S. intelligence officials telling him in August that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was behind the hacking of Clinton's campaign, Trump cited the stolen material for the rest of his campaign, from Oct. 10 through Election Day. At rallies across the country that month, he chanted, “WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks!” and “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable! You have to read it!”

The hack-and-release operation was the largest part of the Russian influence campaign designed to put Trump in the White House, according to investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In total, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks by name 137 times in public appearances and media interviews between October 10 and Election Day, according to PolitiFact. He referred to the emails another two dozen times, but did not mention the organization by name.

While the leaked emails did not reveal anything particularly objectionable about Clinton or her campaign, the media's continued interest in the correspondence was reminiscent of the FBI's previous investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.

Clinton lost the 2016 election in three key states by a total of 77,744 votes.