Cellphone of Trump's lead defense attorney compromised by Chinese hackers, sources say

In the run-up to Tuesday's presidential election, the Chinese cyber-spies who targeted cellphones associated with the Trump and Harris campaigns hacked into the main cellphone used by Trump's lead criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

For more than a year, Blanche has been guiding Trump's fight against criminal hush money charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who brought indictments against Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and take hundreds of classified documents with him after leaving office.

Sources told ABC News that after first breaking into Blanche's phone months ago, the hackers, working on behalf of China's intelligence services, were able to gain access to some of Blanche's text messages and capture audio recordings of phone calls.

According to sources, the FBI determined that Blanche's communications with family and friends were compromised, and investigators are still trying to determine if communications with more sensitive contacts were impacted.

Sources have told ABC News that Blanche is potentially under consideration to become Trump's next White House counsel or to take on a senior law enforcement-related role under a new Trump administration.

The wide-ranging Chinese hacking operation made national headlines two weeks ago, when the FBI issued a statement saying it was investigating recently identified "malicious activity" by "actors affiliated with" the Chinese government who were targeting commercial telecommunications infrastructure.

The statement said the FBI and the Homeland Security department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had been notifying victims of the operation. That apparently included private companies and individuals, who have subsequently beefed up their security measures and replaced compromised cellphones, according to sources.

ABC News previously reported that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, were told last month that they and others associated with the campaign were among the victims whose cellphones were targeted. Democrats were also targeted, ABC News was told.

The FBI believes that the hackers were not able to access encrypted applications on the phones they targeted, but the investigation is still working to confirm that and identify further victims, according to sources.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that hackers linked to Chinese intelligence services compromised phone lines used by politicians and senior national security and policy officials across the U.S. government, allowing the hackers to "scoop up call logs, unencrypted texts and some audio from potentially thousands of Americans and others with whom they interacted."

Asked about the latest reporting from ABC News, a spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement, "Make no mistake, foreign adversaries are terrified of the strength and resolve of President Trump. President Trump will stand up against our enemies and defend the United States from any and all aggression. He will let nothing stop him or get in his way to fight for the American people and to Make America Great Again."

Blanche oversaw Trump's defense in the former president's weekslong criminal trial in New York, where a jury in May convicted Trump on 34 counts of felony fraud stemming from his role in falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

Sentencing is set for later this month, though it's unclear if that will still happen after Trump was reelected to the White House on Tuesday.

After Trump's conviction in May, Blanche told the Associated Press that Trump "knows there's a lot of fight left and there's a lot of opportunity to fix this and that's what we're going to try to do."