Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other U.S. agencies said.
The FBI confirmed on August 12 that it was investigating a complaint from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign that Iran had hacked and distributed a large number of confidential campaign documents. On August 19, intelligence officials confirmed that Iran was behind the attack.
There is no indication that any of the Biden campaign recipients have responded, officials said Wednesday, and several media organizations contacted over the summer with leaked stolen information also said they had not responded.
Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwanted and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who considered them spam or phishing attempts.
The emails were received before the Trump campaign hack was publicly acknowledged and there is no evidence that the recipients of the emails knew their origin.
The announcement is the latest effort by the U.S. government to denounce what officials say is Iran’s brazen and ongoing work to interfere in elections, including a hacking and leaking campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.
Iran has denied any interference in US affairs. On Wednesday, its permanent mission to the United Nations in New York said the latest accusations were “fundamentally unfounded and totally inadmissible.”
In recent months, U.S. officials have used criminal charges, sanctions and public notices to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including one indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to American audiences.
It’s a stark change from the administration’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthright about Russian interference they were seeing from Trump as he ran against Hillary Clinton.
In this case, hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people associated with the Biden campaign before he left the campaign. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public materials from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by 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 breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and stoke discord.
On August 10, the Trump campaign revealed that it had been the victim of a cyberattack and that Iranian agents had stolen and distributed confidential internal documents. At least three media outlets (Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post) received confidential materials from the Trump campaign. All of them have so far refused to disclose details about what they received.
The documents reportedly included an investigative dossier the Trump campaign had conducted on Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesman Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since it learned that people associated with the Biden team were among the recipients of the emails.
The Trump campaign said the leaks were “further evidence that the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.
Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran. The Trump administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.
Iran’s intrusion into the Trump campaign was cited as just one of a number of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans to safeguard the election and the attacks they had seen so far.
“I think the most dangerous moment will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on efforts by U.S. technology companies to protect the election from foreign disinformation and cyberattacks.
