Iranian hackers reached out to President Joe Biden’s campaign, offering stolen information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign, according to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The FBI and other federal agencies reported that the emails were sent unsolicited in an apparent attempt to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.
Officials stated that none of the targeted individuals responded, so the hacked material never surfaced during the final stretch of the highly competitive election.
The emails, which were distributed between late June and early July, were sent to individuals formerly connected with Biden’s campaign. The U.S. government revealed in a statement that the emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails.”
This incident is the latest in a series of alerts from officials warning about Iran’s ongoing attempts to disrupt the 2024 election. Earlier, Iran had been linked to a hack-and-leak operation, with the FBI and other agencies tracing it back to Tehran. Just last week, the Justice Department indicated that charges are being prepared regarding that breach, according to AP.
In a unified statement, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency highlighted that both the hacking of Trump’s campaign and the unsuccessful attempt to target Biden’s campaign were part of a larger effort to undermine voter confidence and create discord.
On August 10, the Trump campaign disclosed that it had been hacked, attributing the breach to Iranian agents who had accessed and distributed sensitive internal documents.
Numerous media organizations — Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post — received these confidential materials. However, to date, none of the outlets have reported on the specific content of the leaked documents.
Investigators suspect that in June, Iranian hackers compromised the personal email of Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Trump, and subsequently tried to gain access to the account of a senior member of Trump’s campaign through Stone’s email.
On July 22, Politico reported that it had begun receiving emails from an unidentified source using an AOL account under the pseudonym “Robert.” The emails contained what seemed to be a research file on Ohio Senator JD Vance, who would later be chosen as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee. The dossier, dated February 23, was created months before Vance was selected as the running mate.
Following the announcement on Wednesday, the Trump campaign responded, saying, “This is further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror. Kamala and Biden must come clean on whether they used the hacked material given to them by the Iranians to hurt President Trump. What did they know and when did they know it?”
Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’s campaign, mentioned that the campaign has worked with law enforcement since learning that some individuals connected to Biden’s team had received the emails.
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein clarified.
{Matzav.com}