After Microsoft released an intelligence report about an Iranian group attacking U.S. election campaigns, and former President Donald Trump’s campaign cited the intelligence as a source for a breach of internal communications, the FBI officially opened an investigation into the attack.
Now it has also emerged that the same Iranian group may have also targeted former presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate and now presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
An FBI spokesperson acknowledged her involvement in the investigation but did not identify any suspects or the scope of the probe.
American presidential campaigns targeted
A person familiar with the Trump campaign confirmed that the personal email address of a senior Trump campaign official had been accessed. This official likely had access to the J.D. Vance audit document that was leaked to the press. It is important to note that the email address was a personal one, not one associated with or provided by the campaign, and it was not protected with two-factor authentication.
Speaking with PoliticsAn attorney for Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, said they had been contacted by both the tech giant and the intelligence community regarding a breach of his email account, with Stone’s attorney Grant Smith saying: “Roger Stone is cooperating.”
Another person familiar with the FBI investigation said the bureau began investigating possible spear-phishing attacks in June 2024, with attacks also targeting the Biden-Harris campaign. There has been no confirmation of the success of those attacks, with a Harris campaign official saying they are “not aware of any security breaches of our systems.”
While Trump’s campaign said the compromised email was accessed by “foreign sources hostile to the United States” and linked the attack to Microsoft’s intelligence report on Iranian groups targeting the U.S. election, the FBI has not yet attributed the attack.