WASHINGTON — Iranian hackers attempted to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign by sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic nominee in a attempt to intervene in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There is no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations contacted them over the summer. leaked stolen information have also said they have not responded. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who saw them as spam or phishing attempts.
The announcement is the latest attempt by the US administration to expose what officials call Iran’s brazen, ongoing election interference. including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked to Tehran last month.
U.S. officials have used criminal charges, sanctions and public warnings in recent months to detail the actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a secret Russian attempt to distribute pro-Russian content to the American public.
It is a clear turnaround from the government’s response in 2016when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthcoming about Russian interference they saw in Trump’s campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people associated with Biden’s campaign before he withdrew. The emails “included an excerpt of stolen, non-public materials from former President Trump’s campaign embedded in the text of the emails,” according to a statement from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The agencies have said the hack of the Trump campaign and an attempted break-in of the Biden-Harris campaign were part of an effort to undermine voter confidence in the election and stoke discord.
The FBI has informed Trump advisers in the past 48 hours that information hacked by Iran was sent to Biden’s campaign, according to a senior campaign aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
The Trump campaign announced on August 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news organizations — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — leaked confidential material from the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal details about what they received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be an investigative dossier the campaign had apparently created on the Republican vice presidential nominee, a senator from Ohio. JD VanceThe document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has been cooperating with law enforcement since it became known that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.
“We are not aware of any material sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what appeared to be a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said. “We strongly condemn any attempt by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections, including this unwanted and unacceptable malicious activity.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national spokesperson, called the attempt to leak stolen information to Biden’s campaign “further evidence that the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.
Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s re-election because they see him as a way to increase tensions between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iranre-imposed sanctions and ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimanian act that prompted Iranian leaders to swear revenge.
Iran’s interference with the Trump campaign was cited as just one of several cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans to protect the election and the attacks they had seen so far.
“I think the most dangerous moment comes 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told lawmakers at the hearing, which focused on efforts by U.S. technology companies to protect elections from foreign disinformation and cyberattacks.
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Jill Colvin, an Associated Press editor in New York, contributed to this report.