Iranians sent “unsolicited emails” containing stolen material 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.
Officials with the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said there is “no information at this time” suggesting that recipients associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign responded to the emails, which government officials denounced as part of the. for seeking to “incite discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process”.
Officials confirmed last month that Iran was behind this year’s efforts to compromise the presidential campaigns of both parties, after the Trump campaign blamed Iran for the hacking attempt in June.
Since late June, Iranian hackers have continued to try to pass non-public stolen material related to the Trump campaign to media organizations, according to a statement Wednesday, which said the FBI was monitoring the activity.
Officials also warned of increasing foreign efforts to interfere in the U.S. election before November, particularly from Russia, Iran and China, countries that “in some way seek to further divide American society for their own benefit and see election periods as moments of vulnerability.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Wednesday that the Iranians wanted to help Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, “because they know that President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and oppose their reign of terror.”
Trump claimed in a full-letter Truth Social post Wednesday night that Harris and his campaign “spyed on me illegally. Will be known as the Iran, Iran, Iran Affair!”
Morgan Finkelstein, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said the campaign has been cooperating with law enforcement since it became aware of the hacking attempt.
“We are not aware of any material that was sent directly to the campaign. A few individuals had their personal emails compromised by spam or phishing attempts,” Finkelstein said in a statement.
Three federal law enforcement sources confirmed the Harris campaign’s statement to NBC News, saying that law enforcement officials traced information stolen from the Trump campaign and concluded that several people linked to the Biden campaign received emails containing the information. Sources added that recipients never responded to the emails and may not even have opened them because they appeared to be phishing attempts.
Law enforcement contacted those people and the Biden campaign to make them aware of the emails, the sources said. The recipients did not contact law enforcement to let them know what they had, but the sources said this does not indicate any concealment or wrongdoing and that the employees likely did not understand what the emails contained.
Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which monitors government-sponsored cyberattacks, said in a report last month that an Iranian hacker group linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns in a phishing operation in May and June.
NBC News reported this month that the Justice Department plans to file charges related to the hacking of the Trump campaign, according to two law enforcement officials. A spokesman for Iran’s United Nations mission has denied the country’s involvement in the operation.
The Department of Justice accused the Iranians of election meddling during the last presidential election. In 2021, the Justice Department indicted two Iranians for a “cyber-ready” campaign to intimidate and influence American voters during the 2020 presidential election.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
