Iranian hackers stole sensitive information from the Trump campaign and sent it to people affiliated with President Biden’s now-defunct campaign earlier this summer in an attempt to meddle in the upcoming election, authorities revealed Wednesday.
The June to July breach took place before Biden dropped out of the race and was part of “Iran’s efforts to sow discord and shape the outcome of US elections,” the FBI said.
The breach was uncovered after the hackers similarly sent stolen information from former president Donald Trump’s campaign to multiple major American media outlets, the FBI said.
“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” the Bureau said in a joint statement with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
None of the people connected to the Biden campaign who received the emails with the stolen info replied to the hackers, based on the investigation, the agencies said.
The Harris campaign said that the emails were sent to individuals’ private emails and that none of the information was sent directly to the Biden campaign.
“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,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement.
The Trump campaign confirmed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and that sensitive internal memos were obtained by Iranians.
The private campaign documents were then sent from an AOL email account belonging to an individual named “Robert” to at least three news outlets — Politico, the New York Times and the Washington Post. One of the documents was a research portfolio on Trump’s now-running mate JD Vance from before he was tapped by the campaign.
The three publications have not disclosed what other confidential information was in the emails.
The Justice Department is preparing to file charges in the cyberattack.
The hack — plus a similar attempt to breach the Biden-Harris campaign — illustrates Tehran’s intentions to impact the 2024 election and voters’ faith in its results, officials said.
“This malicious cyber activity is the latest example of Iran’s multipronged approach … to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” the FBI said.
Trump’s campaign claimed the hack showed Iran doesn’t want him in the White House.
“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,” Trump campaign national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement.
“Kamala and Biden must come clean on whether they used the hacked material given to them by the Iranians to hurt President Trump,” she added. “What did they know and when did they know it?”
Harris’ team said they’ve been fully cooperating with the investigation.
“We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in US elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity,” Finkelstein said.
With Post wires
