Macron Team Says It Suffered `Massive' Hack of Campaign Data

(Bloomberg) -- French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's team said it has been the victim of a “massive” cyber attack and that its documents have been distributed via social networks.

Macron's team said in a statement that hackers have mixed fake documents with real ones stolen from the personal and professional email accounts of campaign staff. The campaign said the activities shown by its documents are completely legal.

Centrist independent Macron was leading his nationalist rival Marine Le Pen by a wide margin when campaigning officially ended at midnight on Friday.

Le Pen's top aide Florian Philippot responded to the leak on Twitter, suggesting the media has avoided scrutinizing Macron thoroughly.

“Will the #Macronleaks uncover things that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?” Philippot said in a tweet. “Frightening democratic shipwreck.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net, Rita Devlin Marier in San Francisco at rdevlin5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, John Fraher