(Reuters) -U.S. federal authorities are investigating an effort to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The Thursday report said Wiles had told associates that some of her cellphone contacts had been hacked, allowing the impersonator to access private phone numbers. The incident […]
Politics
US probes effort to impersonate White House chief of staff, WSJ reports
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(Reuters) -U.S. federal authorities are investigating an effort to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Thursday report said Wiles had told associates that some of her cellphone contacts had been hacked, allowing the impersonator to access private phone numbers.
The incident affected her personal phone, not her government phone, the report said.
The Journal reported that in recent weeks, senators, governors, top U.S. business executives and other figures received messages and calls from a person who claimed to be Wiles, citing the people familiar with the messages.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
“The FBI takes all threats against the president, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness. Safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president’s mission is a top priority,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement on Friday.
The White House has struggled with information security. A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broad swathe of American officials, Reuters reported.
And late last year, a White House official said the United States believed that an alleged sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon targeted and recorded telephone calls of “very senior” American political figures.
As Wiles is a key lieutenant to President Donald Trump and a lynchpin of the White House’s operation, the content of her personal phone would be of extraordinary interest to a range of foreign intelligence agencies and other hostile actors.
Wiles has reportedly been targeted by hackers at least once before, in the final months of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. At the time, hackers alleged by U.S. authorities to be acting on behalf of Iran approached journalists and a political operative with a variety of messages sent to and from Wiles, some of which were eventually published.
(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Raphael Satter; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Michael Perry, Sonali Paul and Mark Porter)