The mystery surrounding sidelined Biden administration Iran envoy Robert Malley is deepening, amid revelations by two top GOP lawmakers that Mr. Malley may have downloaded “classified documents” onto his cellphone, which was then apparently hacked by Iranian cyber operatives.
Mr. Malley, a longtime Democratic diplomat who was a key architect of the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, has had his status in limbo since the State Department stripped his security clearance, suspended his pay and put him on administrative leave nearly a year ago, pending a review of allegations he mishandled classified information.
Republicans on Capitol Hill say the Biden administration has kept them in the dark about the case, but they’ve done their own digging. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and Sen. James E. Risch, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week asking him to confirm that Mr. Malley’s security clearance was suspended “because he improperly transferred classified U.S. government information to a personal email account and/or device that is not authorized to store such information.”
The letter, first obtained and reported on by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, asks the State Department to confirm the lawmakers’ belief that “a hostile cyber actor was able to gain access to [Mr. Malley’s] email and/or phone and obtain the downloaded information,” and questions whether the alleged cyber actor is affiliated with the “Iranian military or intelligence services.”