British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office roughly a month ago, exchanged messages with someone impersonating White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and officials are still trying to determine what happened.
“This is a very odd story,” said CNN’s Betsy Klein, “and there are a lot of questions about how something like this could have happened.”
The substance and format of the messages — whether text, email or otherwise — remains unclear, as does the exact timing of the exchange relative to Burnham taking office. A source told CNN no messages of significance were exchanged, and Burnham grew suspicious quickly that something was off.
The British Embassy in Washington was concerned enough to raise the matter directly with the White House, according to reports first broken by Politico.
The episode surfaces roughly a year after CNN reported that U.S. law enforcement had opened an investigation into efforts to impersonate Wiles, one of Trump’s closest advisers.
At the time, Wiles told associates she believed her phone and contacts list had been hacked, and numerous high-profile figures — including executives, governors, senators and members of Congress — received phishing messages purporting to be from her.
A White House official said Monday’s incident with Burnham was unrelated to that earlier breach of Wiles’ devices, distancing the new episode from the ongoing investigation into her hacked contacts.
Questions remain about how an impersonator was able to reach a sitting prime minister in the first place, and notably, Burnham did engage with the messages for a time before catching on that something wasn’t right.
Neither the White House nor British officials have detailed what safeguards, if any, are now being reviewed in response.
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