Update | French election: Emmanuel Macron targeted in ‘massive’ hack, internal documents spread on social media
En Marche! movement says posting of massive email leak on document-sharing site ‘clearly amounts to democratic destabilisation as was seen in the US’
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s team blasted a “massive and coordinated hacking attack” against his campaign after a flood of internal documents were released online barely 24 hours before the election.
The centrist candidate’s furious staff said the release late Friday of thousands of emails, accounting documents and other files was an attempt at “democratic destabilisation, like that seen during the last presidential campaign in the United States”.
The documents spread on social media just before midnight on Friday - when 39-year-old Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen officially wrapped up campaigning for Sunday’s decisive run-off vote - with his aides calling the leak “unprecedented in a French electoral campaign”.
Hillary Clinton has alleged Russian hacking of her campaign’s emails was partly to blame for her defeat in last year’s US presidential election to Donald Trump.
The leak, posted by someone calling themselves EMLEAKS, came as an 11th-hour twist in what has proved to be one of the most drama-packed elections in French history.
