A federal investigation is underway after elected officers and different distinguished figures have been contacted by an imposter pretending to be White Home Chief of Employees Susie Wiles.
“They breached the phone; they tried to impersonate her,” President Trump advised reporters. “Nobody can impersonate her. There’s only one Susie.”
The president added that Wiles, certainly one of Trump’s closest advisers, is an “amazing woman” and “can handle” the scenario.
A White Home official confirmed the probe on Friday, a day after the Wall Road Journal reported that enterprise leaders and politicians — together with governors, senators and members of congress — began receiving textual content messages and calls from an individual who apparently hacked into Wiles’ cellphone, giving them entry to her private contact record.
The official additional famous it was Wiles’ private cellphone, not her authorities cellphone that was affected.
One of many messages allegedly included a listing of people that must be pardoned, whereas one other reportedly got here with a request for a money switch.
Wiles has since reached out to her colleagues personally, alerting them to the difficulty, although the precise variety of folks contacted by the impersonator is unclear.
The breach comes after the FBI earlier this month warned of a textual content and voice message marketing campaign carried out by a bunch of unidentified “malicious actors,” who had been impersonating senior U.S. authorities officers.