Iranian hackers sent sensitive information stolen from the Trump campaign to President Joe Biden’s campaign earlier this summer, U.S. investigators said Wednesday, Politico reported.
The emails were sent in June and July to individuals “associated with the Biden campaign” and “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and CISA said in a statement.
The Iranians have also continued trying to leak “non-public” Trump campaign material to media organizations since June, the agencies said.
The latest disclosure shed new light on the myriad tactics Iran has employed to damage the Trump campaign, and how persistent it remains despite U.S. officials calling out its first attempt to leak stolen campaign documents this August. POLITICO first reported on the attempted hack-and-leak effort that month.
It is unclear to what extent the then-Biden campaign read or made use of the information the Iranians sent.
The three agencies said the emails were unsolicited and campaign staff did not reply to them.
Morgan Finkelstein, spokesperson for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, which replaced the Biden campaign, said in a statement Wednesday that “we have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware” of the information being sent to Biden campaign personnel.
“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 said. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, said the development “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?” she said in a statement.
During a rally Wednesday night in New York, Trump accused Iran of foreign election interference but said he was unsure what material the country’s hackers sent to his former opponent’s campaign.
“Iran hacked into my campaign. I don’t know what the hell they found, I’d like to find out. Couldn’t have been too exciting,” he said.
POLITICO first reported in August that the Trump campaign was the victim of a hack and leak campaign, later tied by federal authorities and private sector companies to Iran, after POLITICO was among the media groups that received stolen campaign documents.
“The FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible,” the agencies said. They stressed as well that Iran, along with Russia and China, are “trying by some measure to exacerbate divisions in U.S. society for their own benefit, and see election periods as moments of vulnerability.”
The Justice Department is reportedly readying criminal charges in connection to the incidents.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, speaking at the Aspen Cyber Summit on Wednesday, stressed that Iran is a key threat to U.S. election security this year.
“They are trying to influence the presidential campaign, they are pushing out fake personas pushing out propaganda and using the Gaza conflict almost as kerosene to stoke divisions,” Monaco said. “Let me be very, very clear: We are not underestimating the lengths to which Iran will go to influence this campaign.”
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