The FBI and other intelligence agencies said Wednesday that the Iranian government has attempted to share information stolen in the Trump campaign hack with the Biden campaign and has been sending materials to various media outlets.
“Iranian malicious cyber actors sent unsolicited emails between late June and early July to individuals then associated with President Biden's campaign that contained excerpts of non-public materials stolen from former President Trump's campaign,” the agency said in a joint statement with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“At this time, we have no information to indicate that the recipient has responded.”
The Harris campaign condemned the Trump campaign for sharing the data but said it ignored phishing emails that appeared to be sent from Iran to staffers' personal email addresses.
“We have been working with the appropriate law enforcement agencies since learning at the time that individuals associated with the Biden campaign were targeted in this foreign influence operation. We have not been aware of any materials sent directly to the campaign. Several individuals were targeted with emails that appeared to be spam and phishing attempts,” Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Harris-Waltz campaign, said in a statement.
“We strongly condemn any attempt by a foreign power to interfere in our elections, including this unwelcome, unacceptable and malign activity.”
Intelligence agencies assured them that no one from the Biden-Harris campaign responded to the emails, but the Trump campaign expressed concern that the information may have been used by its rival campaign.
“This is further evidence that Iran is actively interfering in our election to support Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because Iran knows President Trump will reimpose harsh sanctions and stand up to Iran's reign of terror. Kamala and Biden must reveal whether they used hacking materials provided by Iran to harm President Trump. What did they know and when did they know?” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement.
The debate also played out in the House Intelligence Committee, with Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) posing a similar line of questioning: “What did they do with that information?”
Meanwhile, Senator Jim Himes (D-Conn.) noted that Trump had previously asked Russia to hack the Clinton campaign, and suggested “this time we should just do our jobs.”
“The statements released today by ODNI and the FBI make clear that there is no evidence that anyone associated with the Biden campaign responded to online actors who peddled illegally obtained emails that we now know to be Iranian cutouts,” Himes said.
“Thankfully, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden understand that foreign interference in our elections is unacceptable, regardless of who it benefits or who it hurts.”
The warning also said that Iran “has continued efforts since June to send stolen, non-public materials related to former President Trump's election campaign to U.S. media organizations.”
The statement did not say whether any of the information had been made public, but called the incident “the latest example of Iran's multi-pronged approach to stoking discord and undermining confidence in the electoral process.”
Iran's government has denied any involvement in hacking the campaign, saying on Wednesday it was “not involved in the internal turmoil or disputes surrounding the elections in the United States.”
“As Iran has already clearly and repeatedly stated, it has no motive or intention to interfere in the US elections and therefore categorically denies such accusations. If the US government truly seeks the truth, it is incumbent on it to provide verified evidence formally and transparently in order to receive a correspondingly accurate response,” Ali Karimi Magham, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the UN, said in a statement.
The Trump campaign was hacked earlier this summer, but the issue only became public in August, when reporters were contacted by a man calling himself Robert who said he had internal campaign documents.
Trump ally Roger Stone was also among the targets of the Iranian hacking, Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles has also reported.The Washington Post.
The FBI has suggested that Iran similarly tried and failed to hack into the Democratic campaign (which was then supporting the candidacy of President Biden and Vice President Harris).
In a recent conference call with reporters, ODNI said intelligence indicates Iran is accelerating efforts to influence U.S. elections by spreading disinformation on social media and aiming to further divide the American public.
These efforts come alongside intensifying campaigns by both Russia and China.
The United States has taken action against a variety of Russian influence tactics in recent weeks, seizing 32 web domains used to spread disinformation and indicting two RT (formerly Russia Today) employees for working with Tenet Media to spread pro-Russian narratives and reaching out to various right-wing social media figures.
Both the Washington Post and NBC report that the US plans to file charges related to the Iranian hacking soon.
Updated 8:34 p.m.
