Burnham exchanged messages with person posing as Trump’s chief of staff

Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with a person posing as the chief of staff to US President Donald Trump.

Downing Street has declined to comment on the security breach, first reported by Politico.

The news website reported that officials said Burnham communicated with the person claiming to be Susie Wiles “before becoming suspicious that the contact was illegitimate” and claimed only a “few messages” were exchanged.

A government spokesperson said: “We do not comment on national security matters.”

It is understood the communication between Burnham and the person posing as Wiles was in the form of messages and there was no conversation between the two.

“No messages of significance” were exchanged and the texts were “quickly reported to the appropriate authorities” once they were believed to be suspicious, sources said.

Downing Street did not say when the messages were exchanged, or how many there were, nor whether they were over WhatsApp or another system.

A White House official told the BBC on Monday that the latest incident “had nothing to do” with Wiles’ phone being hacked.

The BBC has previously reported an FBI probe into Wiles’ phone being hacked in May last year.

At that time, Wiles said her phone had been hacked after an impersonator, or impersonators, used her contacts file to message other top US officials.

The impersonation was targeted at her personal phone, not a government one, but recipients included US senators, governors and top business executives.

Wiles, a key Trump ally, was also among those targeted by a cyber espionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces – in 2024.

Separately, the UK government is in the process of removing the personal mobile numbers of three cabinet ministers from websites where they had been published.

The numbers of Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, Justice Secretary Alex Norris and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant had all been publicly available online.

A government spokesperson said it had “robust procedures in place to ensure the security of sensitive information”.