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- A two-year investigation into how a minister’s email was hacked and amplified by “Russian actors” is still underway.
- Trade documents were stolen from Liam Fox’s email and put online ahead of the 2019 general election.
- The National Crime Agency is being urged to conclude its investigation and publish the findings.
The investigation into how sensitive trade documents were stolen from a minister’s personal email account and then amplified by “Russian actors” during the 2019 general election campaign should be urgently concluded and the findings published, an MP has said.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has been investigating how sensitive trade documents were stolen from the email account of Liam Fox, the then-international trade secretary, since the end of 2019.
The documents, detailing talks between UK and US officials, were seized upon during the general election campaign by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as evidence that Boris Johnson’s government were putting the NHS at risk in negotiations for a post-Brexit deal.
Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael has written to the NCA asking for an update on the status of the investigation.
In a letter, seen by Insider, Carmichael says: “There is now a vital public interest that this investigation is urgently concluded and its findings, where possible, are published in a timely and transparent manner, so that the public can have confidence that Russian attempts to influence UK elections have been swiftly and comprehensively assessed.”
In July 2020, then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the government had “concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to intefere in the 2019 general election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked government documents.” He was unable to comment further, due to the ongoing criminal investigation.
In December 2019, Reddit, one site where the documents were first shared, said the amplification campaign had originated from Russia.
The BBC reported in August 2020 that the documents had been stolen from Fox’s personal email account, along with the rest of the contents of his account.
Carmichael told Insider: “It is now well over two years since the National Crime Agency began its investigation into the hacking of classified trade documents in 2019. While I do not doubt that the pandemic will have disrupted enquiries to some extent, we cannot afford to kick this investigation into the long grass.
“Concerns about Russian influence in our public life have resurfaced and intensified with Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. We all have serious questions to answer as to how we identify and confront interference in our elections and our politics generally.
“If, as has been suggested, Russian state actors leaked and amplified classified documents obtained from a Secretary of State’s personal email account, that would raise serious questions about both government security and the ongoing nature of Russian political interference. We need a timely response from the NCA so that this matter can be fully answered.”
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In a recent letter to Keir Starmer, Cabinet minister Lord True described the Labour party’s use of the documents in the 2019 general election as an act of distributing “propaganda from a disinformation campaign by hostile Russian actors.”
The government’s own definition of disinformation is the “deliberate creation and sharing of false and/or manipulated information that is intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either for the purposes of causing harm, or for political, personal or financial gain.”
The authenticity of the documents leaked online has never been put into doubt.
In September, one analyst told Insider the leak was the closest a suspected Russian cyber-attack had actually come to influencing the outcome of a UK general election.
The NCA did not respond to Insider’s request for comment. The agency previously told Insider in September that the investigation was ongoing.
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