The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Friday against three Iranian operatives suspected of hacking Donald Trump's presidential campaign and disseminating stolen information to media organizations.
The latest action, coupled with sanctions and rewards for information leading to the hackers' capture, is the latest U.S. government effort to call out what’s seen as Iran’s attempts to interfere in the election by damaging Trump and sowing general chaos. It comes as Iran has also been accused of threatening the lives of Trump and former officials and US-Iran relations remain especially tense with Israel fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The defendants' own words made clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We know that Iran is continuing with its brazen efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and advance its malign activities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference announcing the charges.
The Hurricane season is on. Our meteorologists are ready. Sign up for the NBC 6 Weather newsletter to get the latest forecast in your inbox.
The three accused hackers were employed by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Since 2020, their operation sought to compromise the email accounts of a broad swath of targets, including a former ambassador to Israel, a former CIA deputy director, officials at the State and Defense departments, a former U.S. homeland security adviser and journalists, according to the indictment.
The Treasury Department issued sanctions Friday related to the hacking and the State Department offered rewards of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrests of the defendants, who are not in custody.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the allegations as “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” saying that Iran had neither the motive nor intention to interfere with the election. It challenged the U.S. to provide evidence and said if the U.S. does so, “we will respond accordingly.”
The hacking came to light after the Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been breached and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents.
Multiple major news organizations that said they were leaked confidential information from inside the Trump campaign, including Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post, declined to publish it.
U.S. intelligence officials subsequently linked Iran to a hack of the Trump campaign and to an attempted breach of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign. They said the hack-and-dump operation was meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of elections that Iran perceives to be “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests."
The indictment makes clear that the accused hackers impersonated U.S. officials and set up fake email personas to try to dupe their victims.
Politico has reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
Last week, officials also revealed that the Iranians in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails containing excerpts of the hacked information to people associated with the Biden campaign. None of the recipients replied. The Harris campaign said the emails resembled spam or a phishing attempt and condemned the outreach to the Iranians as “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
“Today the FBI would like to send a message to the government of Iran: You and your hackers can’t hide behind your keyboards,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a video statement. “If you try to meddle in our elections, we’re going to hold you accountable.”
