Downing Street declines to comment, citing national security
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged text messages with a person posing as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff to US President Donald Trump, before suspecting the contact was not genuine, according to officials cited by Politico.
Politico first reported the incident. Officials told the outlet that Burnham became suspicious the contact was illegitimate and that only a “few messages” were exchanged.
Downing Street declined to comment. A government spokesperson told the BBC: “We do not comment on national security matters.”
The BBC reported that the communication consisted of text messages rather than a conversation, that no messages of significance were exchanged, and that the texts were quickly reported to the appropriate authorities once they were believed to be suspicious.
The BBC previously reported that the FBI opened a probe in May 2025 after Wiles said her phone had been hacked. An impersonator, or impersonators, used her contacts file to message other top US officials including US senators, governors and top business executives. That earlier campaign targeted her personal phone rather than a government phone.
Wiles was also among those targeted in 2024 by a cyber-espionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, according to earlier BBC reporting.
In a separate 2024 incident, the Foreign Office confirmed then-foreign secretary David Cameron fell victim to a hoax call with someone posing as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who served as president of Ukraine between 2014 and 2019. Cameron exchanged text messages with the impersonator. The Foreign Office released details of the exchange publicly over fears it could be “manipulated.”