Latest news with #SusieWiles
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Has Bizarre Retort to Chief of Staff's Phone Hack
President Donald Trump has offered an outlandish rebuttal to reports that one of his top officials at the White House was hacked. A reporter asked the president about a report from the Wall Street Journal that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had not only had her devices hacked, but that the hackers used her phone to send messages and place calls under her name. 'Nobody can impersonate Susie,' Trump shot back. 'There's only one Susie. There's only one.' He added in the exchange Friday evening that he considers his chief of staff 'an amazing woman' and that he has every confidence 'she can handle it.' The White House has responded to the Journal report by insisting that the Trump administration 'takes the security of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated.' The incident nevertheless comes hot on the heels of the Signalgate scandal earlier in March, in which The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat used by top members of the Trump administration to discuss sensitive details of imminent missile strikes against Yemen. Those officials included Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Intelligence Chief Tulsi Gabbard, among others. The incident sent shockwaves across Washington, DC, prompting alarm over the apparent severity of informational vulnerabilities at the White House. Those concerns have been further exacerbated in the weeks since following repeated reports into Hegseth's prolific use of the messaging platform, with the Defence Secretary reportedly even bypassing Pentagon security protocols in order to install the app on his computer.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Impersonator breached Chief of Staff Susie Wiles's phone, Trump says
An apparent impersonator breached the phone of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump said Friday, and pretended to be her in calls and messages received by her high-profile contacts. Trump did not go into detail about the impersonation but told reporters he was not concerned because Wiles is 'an amazing woman' who 'can handle it.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
FBI investigates effort to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles: report
The Brief U.S. authorities are investigating an attempt to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The scheme involved hacked phone contacts and messages sent to senators, governors, and executives. FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau is treating the case as a top cybersecurity priority. WASHINGTON - Federal officials are investigating a troubling attempt to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles using her personal cellphone contacts, according to a report published Thursday by the Wall Street Journal. The impersonation effort reportedly involved text messages and calls sent to high-profile individuals—including U.S. senators, governors, and major business leaders—by someone claiming to be Wiles. The Journal cited sources familiar with the matter who said the messages came from someone exploiting her hacked contacts. The backstory The attempt targeted Wiles' personal phone, not her government-issued device, the Wall Street Journal reported. Wiles is a close adviser to President Donald Trump and a central figure in his current administration, making any compromise of her communications particularly sensitive. Sources told the Journal that Wiles informed associates her contact list had been breached, enabling the impersonator to reach powerful individuals while posing as her. So far, the White House has not commented publicly on the investigation What they're saying FBI Director Kash Patel acknowledged the situation in a statement released Friday. "The FBI takes all threats against the president, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness," Patel said. "Safeguarding our administration officials' ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president's mission is a top priority." Big picture view The White House has faced several recent cybersecurity breaches. Earlier this month, a hacker accessed communications from officials using the same platform as former national security adviser Mike Waltz, according to Reuters. In late 2024, U.S. intelligence assessed that Chinese cyber actors had intercepted calls involving senior American political figures. Wiles herself was previously targeted during Trump's 2024 campaign. U.S. authorities linked that earlier attack to Iranian actors, who allegedly obtained and shared private messages involving Wiles with journalists and political operatives. Given her key role in the Trump administration, Wiles' communications are likely a high-value target for foreign intelligence agencies and hostile actors. The Source This article is based on a report published by the Wall Street Journal on May 30, 2025, citing people familiar with a federal investigation into an impersonation attempt involving White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Additional context was drawn from prior Reuters reporting on recent White House cybersecurity incidents and public statements from FBI Director Kash Patel. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
US government investigates attempt to impersonate Trump's chief of staff
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.
CNA
2 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Trump, Musk offer show of unity as Tesla CEO departs government
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday (May 30) that billionaire Elon Musk will remain a close adviser, even after the Tesla CEO departs the administration following a chaotic four-month tenure that saw him disrupt dozens of foreign agencies in his effort to slash government spending. During a joint press conference in the Oval Office, Trump lauded Musk and defended his cost-cutting campaign as the head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency. The group has eliminated thousands of jobs and canceled billions of dollars in spending, including the majority of US foreign aid, but has thus far fallen far short of Musk's lofty initial promises. "Elon is really not leaving. He's going to be back and forth," Trump said from behind the Resolute Desk, as Musk stood to his right, wearing a black DOGE hat and a T-shirt that read "The Dogefather" in the style of the movie "The Godfather." The press conference appeared aimed at showing unity after Musk prompted frustration among White House officials this week by criticizing Trump's sweeping tax and spending bill as too expensive. Some senior aides, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, saw Musk's remarks on the tax bill as an open break from the administration, with Miller particularly irked by the comments, a source familiar with the matter said. Trump gave Musk a large golden key inside a wooden box bearing his signature, a gift he said he reserved only for "very special people." Musk, in turn, admired the gold finishings that Trump has installed around the Oval Office. The White House and senior aides had insisted earlier in Trump's term that Musk, the world's richest man, was a key figure who wasn't going anywhere. But more recently, they began pointing to the expiration of his 130-day mandate as a special government employee, which was set to end around May 30, as a natural endpoint. Musk, meanwhile, has said he intends to devote most of his energy to his business empire, including Tesla and SpaceX, after some investors expressed concern that DOGE was occupying too much of his time. He has also said he plans to ratchet back his political donations, after he spent nearly US$300 million backing Trump's presidential campaign and those of other Republicans in 2024. But he told reporters on Friday that he would continue to be part of Trump's circle of advisers. "I expect to remain a friend and an adviser, and certainly, if there's anything the president wants me to do, I'm at the president's service," he said. CUTS FALL SHORT Musk initially claimed DOGE would slash at least US$2 trillion in federal spending. Four months into its efforts, DOGE now estimates it has saved US$175 billion. But the details it has posted on its website, where it gives the only public accounting of those changes, add up to less than half of that figure. US Treasury summaries reviewed by Reuters show that the agencies targeted by DOGE have cut about US$19 billion in combined spending compared to the same period last year, far below Musk's original target and amounting to just about 0.5% of total federal expenditures. Trump and DOGE have managed to cut nearly 12%, or 260,000, of the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce largely through threats of firings, buyouts and early retirement offers, a Reuters review of agency departures found. Musk's prominent status as the face of DOGE's cost-cutting efforts has prompted widespread protests at Tesla outlets in the US and Europe, driving down both its sales and its stock price. Musk said on Friday that downsizing the government had proven more difficult than he expected, blaming what he called the "banal evil of bureaucracy." But he also expressed confidence that DOGE would eventually achieve much deeper savings.
