WikiLeaks publishes leaked Macron campaign emails

The whistleblowing website released the trove of leaked emails on Monday as a searchable archive. It comes almost three months after the Macron campaign was hacked on the eve of his election.

Wikileaks, best known for publishing huge stores of US spy agency records, said the emails date between March 2009 and April 24, 2017.

The organisation said it had confirmed the 21,075 emails were sent or received by addresses associated with the campaign by checking the "domain keys" used to sign emails. It published a further 50,773 emails it could not verify.In total, the leak includes 71,848 emails, 26,506 attachments and 4,493 unique senders. The Macron campaign announced that it had been hacked on May 5, just days before his run-off victory over Marine Le Pen.

The campaign has previously blamed Russian interests for the hacking and cybersecurity researchers have linked the attack to a group known as APT28 or Fancy Bears, the group believed to have hacked the US Democrats last year and which is often linked to the Kremlin.

However, the youngest of French presidents is becoming embroiled — whether he likes it or not — in the everyday business of government. He says he wants to rule as a "Jupiter" operating above the political maelstrom as he delivers thunderbolt judgments and instructions.

The huge trove of hacked emails from Emmanuel Macron's campaign had barely been released online when the spotlight immediately fell on Russia hackers.

With as much as 9 gigabytes of data from the campaign having been dumped online, instant comparisons were made with the cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's Democratic campaign.

US intelligence agencies said in January that Vladimir Putin, Russian President, had ordered those hacks to influence the election on behalf of Donald Trump, her Republican rival who went on to win the US presidency.

The Russian president has repeatedly denied the accusations and this week said "it has never occurred to us to interfere in other countries internal affairs".

While it was not known who was behind the attack on Macron's campaign, which came two days before french election day, suspicion immediately fell on Moscow.

"It was to be expected," Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to Washington, tweeted. "A last-ditch offensive to the benefit of preferred candidate of a foreign government."

The message, which was later deleted, was clear: Mr Putin's Russia had tried to help Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate. Other in the US were less circumspect.

"Putin is waging war against Western democracies and our President is on the wrong side," Brian Fallon, former Clinton campaign press secretary, wrote on Friday evening.

Russia has denied responsibility and the head of France's cybersecurity agency, Guillaume Poupard, has said there is no evidence of Russian interference.

On Monday Wikileaks referenced Poupard's comments when it published the emails.