Michelle Obama passport scan published, leak website claims, to show 'security level of our government'

The website D.C. Leaks has published what appears to be scanned pages from first lady Michelle Obama's passport.

The site says the file came from a hacked email account belonging to Ian Mellul, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a White House advance staffer.

"The leaked files show the security level of our government," operators of the site said in a Thursday morning email to reporters, which commanded attention two days after the leak was published with its passport file attachment.

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"If terrorists hack emails of White House Office staff and get such sensitive information we will see the fall of our country," the message says. "Follow the link below for more interesting stuff. We hope you will tell the people about this criminal negligence of White House Office staffers."

The identity of the D.C. Leaks operator or operators is not publicly known.

The leak website's operation comes, however, following embarrassing hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by a hacker going under the name Guccifer 2.0, who at least some cybersecurity firms say may be associated with the Russian government.

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D.C. Leaks earlier this month published emails hacked from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in his private correspondence offered sharp criticism of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and other information, including an assertion that Israel has 200 nuclear weapons in its secrecy-shrouded arsenal.

The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the documents and mostly mundane correspondence attributed to Mellul are authentic.

Mellul, who has disabled his Twitter account, did not immediately respond to an email sent to the address included in the correspondence.

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