The US accused three Iranians of ‘hacking and leaking’ Trump’s election campaign
US authorities have charged three Iranians with cyberattacks on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign this year.
Prosecutors said Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who participated in a “hack and leak” operation in an “attempted attempt to intention” to sabotage an anonymous presidential campaign.
Last week, US officials said Iranian hackers attempted to distribute documents stolen from Trump’s campaign to individuals linked to Joe Biden’s re-election effort.
The trio were charged with 18 counts including wire fraud, identity theft and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, as well as hacking-related charges.
In August, the Trump campaign said its internal communications were hacked by Iran. Iranian officials denied involvement in the hack in a statement at the time.
A few days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that Iran was behind the intrusion into Trump’s campaign.
In a statement issued to other US intelligence agencies, the FBI warned that Iran was attempting to “sow discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”.
The agencies warned they had “observed increasingly aggressive activity by Iran during this election cycle”.
The 37-page indictment outlines a multi-year hacking campaign targeting US government and intelligence officials, the media and individuals involved in political campaigns, starting in 2020 .
In May 2024, the Department of Justice alleges, three hackers and the accused mastermind began targeting the “U.S. Presidential campaign 1.”
They allegedly stole some of their documents and communications through fraudulent email accounts impersonating US government officials and phishing tactics that allowed them to gain access to their accounts. personal email accounts of people working on the campaign.
Then, in June, they “sought to weaponize” the information by attempting to leak it to the media and individuals involved in the “second US Presidential campaign”, this department alleges.
When asked at a press conference whether the Biden campaign had ever used hacked documents, Attorney General Merrick Garland said “we see no indication that anyone has responded.”
He added that the FBI has received “good cooperation” from the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign, which was taken over by Vice President Kamala Harris in July.
Harris’ campaign said it is cooperating with law enforcement agencies.
Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said: “We are not aware of any documents sent directly to the campaign; Some individuals have had their personal emails targeted with what looks like spam or phishing.”
The BBC asked Trump’s campaign and Iran’s delegation to the United Nations to comment on the incident.
According to the indictment, two email accounts associated with a “former informal political advisor to the Trump campaign” were compromised, along with an unnamed campaign official and a representative attorney. for this campaign.
“Today the FBI wants to send a message to the Iranian government – you and your hackers cannot hide behind your keyboard,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. long-running FBI investigation”.
Among the documents Iran is said to have obtained from the Trump campaign are research files on vice presidential candidate JD Vance.
The dossier and other documents were sent to several major US news outlets, but were not made publicly available until Thursday when journalist Ken Klippenstein, who previously worked for the investigative agency The Intercept, posted the Vance documents to its blog.
Klippenstein, who said someone named “Robert” gave him the file, was quickly banned by X, formerly Twitter. In a statement, the company said the journalist had violated regulations on disclosing personal information.
