Donald Trump’s campaign has said some of its internal communications were hacked and suggested it was targeted by Iranian operatives.

US news website Politico reported on Saturday that it had been emailed campaign documents, including an internal investigation into a Trump associate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.

A Trump campaign spokesman told the BBC that the documents were illegally obtained by “foreign sources hostile to the United States”. In a statement to US media, Iranian officials denied any connection to the hack.

Politico said it had verified the authenticity of the documents. The BBC has not independently verified these claims.

The Trump campaign offered no further details or evidence linking the leaked documents to the Iranian hackers or the Iranian government.

His statement came a day after Microsoft released a report saying Iranian hackers had targeted the campaign of a US presidential candidate in June.

Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) said the campaign was sent with a spear phishing email – a message designed to appear trustworthy in order to get the target to click on a malicious link.

“Over the past several months, we have observed significant influence activities by Iranian actors,” the MTAC report said.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said the mention of the June hacking attempt in the MTAC report was “consistent with the timing of President Trump’s selection of the vice presidential nominee.”

“The Iranians know that President Trump will end their reign of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Mr. Cheung said.

He said the purpose of the hack was “to interfere with the 2024 elections”.

A spokesman for Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said in a statement to The Washington Post: “We do not give any credence to such reports.

“The Iranian regime has no intention and no intention of interfering in the US presidential election.”

Politico said that in late July it began receiving emails from a man who identified himself only as “Robert” using an AOL email account.

The news outlet said the Vance file is 271 pages long and is based on publicly available information about Vance’s past records and statements. The email account also sent part of a research document about Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was also a vice presidential candidate.

Presidential campaigns routinely research vice presidential nominees to prevent potentially embarrassing revelations. Politico reported that some of Mr. Vance’s Previous – and well-known – criticism Trump was labeled as a “potential threat” in the document.

The Microsoft report noted: “Iranian cyber-active influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles.”

Microsoft released a similar report during the 2020 elections. Iranian hackers targeted the presidential campaign..

US security sources have also warned of an Iranian plot to kill Trump, unrelated to last month’s attempted shooting in Pennsylvania. And on Tuesday, the US Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran for plotting to assassinate US officials, including the former president.