British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone impersonating White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the second known incident of a fraudster posing as Trump's top aide to reach senior officials.
Burnham, who took office on July 20 after replacing former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, traded what officials described as "a few messages" with an unidentified person pretending to be Wiles before growing suspicious and cutting off contact. CBS News reported that the exchange involved only written messages, no phone call or verbal conversation took place. Neither the date of the exchange nor the platform used has been disclosed.
The incident, first reported Monday by POLITICO and confirmed by BBC News, drew immediate attention inside the British government. Two of the four anonymous officials who spoke to POLITICO said the U.K. Embassy in Washington raised the matter directly with the White House. A White House official told CBS News flatly: "This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff's devices being hacked."
Downing Street did not respond to CBS News' request for comment. A representative told POLITICO the prime minister's office would "not comment on national security matters." The British Foreign Office also declined to respond.
Officials characterized the messages Burnham sent as "of no significance." But the fact that a brand-new head of government, in office barely three weeks, could be reached and briefly fooled by someone pretending to be the White House chief of staff raises basic questions about the security protocols around the prime minister's communications.
Burnham, who leads the Labour Party, replaced Starmer after Starmer had led Labour to a landslide election victory just two years earlier. How the impersonator obtained enough information to contact Burnham convincingly remains unexplained.
This is not the first time someone has impersonated Wiles to reach high-ranking officials. Last May, unknown individuals accessed Wiles' personal cellphone and used her contacts to reach out to other top officials while pretending to be her. The FBI opened an investigation into that breach. A White House spokesperson said at the time: "The White House takes the cybersecurity of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated."
President Trump acknowledged the earlier incident, saying Wiles had been hacked but adding he was not concerned because his chief of staff is "an amazing woman" who "can handle it," the Washington Examiner reported.
The White House's denial that Wiles' devices were compromised in the Burnham incident leaves an obvious gap. If the impersonator did not hack Wiles' phone or accounts this time, how did they pull it off? Neither the White House nor Downing Street has offered an answer.
The Burnham episode fits a broader and growing pattern of impersonation campaigns aimed at senior government figures. AP News reported that the FBI has warned of "malicious actors" misusing artificial intelligence to impersonate senior U.S. government officials. The State Department has separately flagged AI-assisted attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials. In those cases, an impostor reached at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator, and a governor.
That list now includes the leader of America's closest ally.
The method, text messages rather than phone calls or video, suggests the impersonators are exploiting the simplest and least-verified form of official communication. Written messages carry no voice or face to authenticate, and the growing sophistication of AI tools makes it easier to mimic tone, style, and even scheduling patterns that would make a message appear genuine.
The list of unanswered questions is long. What platform carried the messages? What tipped Burnham off that the person was not Wiles? Is the current incident connected to the earlier cellphone breach, or is this a separate actor? What is the status of the FBI's investigation into the May incident? And what steps, if any, has the White House taken to prevent further impersonation of its chief of staff?
Both governments are treating this as a matter too sensitive to discuss publicly. That may be prudent from a security standpoint. But the pattern is now clear: someone, or multiple someones, has repeatedly and successfully impersonated the White House chief of staff to contact senior officials across at least two countries. The FBI is investigating. Foreign governments are raising alarms through diplomatic channels. And the public is left with official assurances that the messages were "of no significance" and that Wiles' devices were not hacked, with no explanation of what actually happened.
When a foreign head of state can be duped by a fake text from the president's top aide, the problem is not the prime minister's gullibility. It is the security infrastructure, or lack of it, around the people who are supposed to be the hardest to reach.
