Iranians sent “unsolicited emails” that included stolen material that was not publicly available from former President Donald Trump’s campaign to people associated with his Democratic political rival, the FBI and two other government agencies said Wednesday.
The FBI and federal officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said there was “currently no information” indicating that recipients associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign had responded to the emails, which the government officials condemned as part of an effort “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
The same agencies had confirmed last month that Iran was behind efforts this year to compromise presidential campaigns of both parties after Trump’s campaign accused Iran of a hacking attempt in June.
Iranian hackers have continued to make attempts since late June to transmit non-public stolen material tied to Trump’s campaign to media organizations, according to Wednesday’s statement, which noted the FBI is tracking that activity.
The agencies also warned of growing foreign meddling efforts into U.S. elections ahead of November, particularly from Russia, Iran and China, nations that are “trying by some measure to exacerbate divisions in U.S. society for their own benefit, and see election periods as moments of vulnerability.”
In a statement Wednesday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that Iranians wanted to help Harris “because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror.”
In an all-caps Truth Social post on Wednesday night, Trump claimed Harris and her campaign “were illegally spying on me. To be known as the Iran, Iran, Iran case!”
Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said that the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since it learned about the hacking effort.
“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 in a statement.
Three federal law enforcement sources confirmed the accuracy of the Harris campaign’s statement to NBC News, saying that law enforcement tracked the stolen information from the Trump campaign and determined that several people linked to Biden’s campaign received emails containing that information. The recipients never responded to the emails and may not have even opened them because they appeared to be phishing attempts, the sources added.
Law enforcement contacted those individuals and the Biden campaign to make them aware of the emails, the sources said. The individuals did not reach out to law enforcement to alert them of what they had in their possession, but sources said that’s not an indication of hiding anything or wrongdoing and that the staffers likely didn’t realize what was in the emails.
In an August report, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which monitors government-backed cyberattacks, said an Iranian hacker group tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had targeted both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns in May and June in a phishing operation.
NBC News reported this month that the Justice Department plans to file criminal charges in connection with the hacking of Trump’s campaign, according to two law enforcement officials. A spokesperson for Iran’s Mission to the United Nations previously denied the nation’s role in the operation.
The Justice Department charged Iranians with election meddling during the last presidential election. In 2021, the Justice Department indicted two Iranians over a “cyber-enabled” campaign to intimidate and influence American voters during the 2020 presidential election.
