US government investigates attempt to impersonate Trump's chief of staff

Al Jazeera

3 days ago

The United States government has opened an investigation into apparent efforts to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in communications to politicians.
On Friday, a White House official confirmed to The Associated Press that a probe had been opened, following a report about the impersonation in The Wall Street Journal a day prior.
Anonymous sources told The Journal that governors, business leaders and senators had received messages and phone calls from someone posing as Wiles, who is a close associate of President Donald Trump.
Some recipients told the newspaper that the calls even appeared to replicate Wiles's voice using artificial intelligence.
The giveaway, according to The Wall Street Journal, came when the messages asked about items Wiles should know or did not sound like her in other ways. For example, the newspaper reported that some messages were either too formal or had poor grammar.
The phone number used was also not Wiles's normal number. Still, some of the sources who spoke to The Journal said they interacted with the impostor before realising it was not, in fact, Wiles herself.
On Friday, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kash Patel, issued a statement denouncing any impersonation campaigns.
'Safeguarding our administration officials' ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president's mission is a top priority,' said Patel.
Earlier this month, the bureau had acknowledged that 'malicious actors' appeared to be mimicking government officials through a 'text and voice messaging campaign'.
In Wiles's case, sources close to the chief of staff told The Wall Street Journal that someone had hacked into her personal mobile phone, thereby accessing her contacts.
A longtime Republican consultant, Wiles has her political roots in Florida, where she first served as chief of staff to a Republican mayor in the city of Jacksonville.
She has since risen to higher echelons in the political sphere, helping to manage the gubernatorial campaign of Republican leader Rick Scott and later serving in a similar role in two of Trump's presidential bids.
In 2016, she led operations in Florida for Trump's first successful election campaign, and in 2024, she served as his national campaign manager.
Two days after his re-election victory, on November 7, Trump announced Wiles would be accompanying him to the White House as his chief of staff, a role that oversees daily activities for the president. The chief of staff also coordinates policy development and supervises White House staff.
While the FBI has yet to confirm how Wiles's personal contacts got into the hands of her impersonator, US media has noted that Trump's presidential campaign announced in August 2024 that it had been hacked by Iran and that sensitive documents were stolen.