Iranian Hackers Attempted To Entice Vice President Harris’s Campaign With Information Stolen From Trump Camp

Feds say emails containing ‘stolen, non-public material’ were sent earlier this summer to the vice president’s campaign.

Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images
President Trump during a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images

Iranian hackers were caught red-handed in their latest efforts to disrupt the upcoming elections, with FBI officials confirming that they sent unsolicited emails to President Biden’s former campaign with stolen information about President Trump.

A joint statement from the FBI, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the messages, which were sent in late June and early July, “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to the Associated Press. They added that breaches of both presidential campaigns were part of a continued effort to undermine American voters’ faith and stoke discord among the public.

Officials from Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign said that the messages were sent to only a few people who dismissed them as spam mail.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” a Harris campaign spokeswoman, Morgan Finkelstein, said. 

“We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections, including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity,” the campaign said.

FBI investigators contacted Trump’s campaign this week to inform them of the latest hack. The president’s election team announced on August 10 that they were aware of previous hacking attempts.

The Trump campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the announcement from the feds is “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” in an effort to help Ms.Harris.

The stolen information was also sent to several press outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico. All three declined to publish what they received.

Politico did report that it started receiving emails from an AOL mail account identified only as “Robert,” who provided a dossier on the vice presidential nominee, Senator Vance. The document, which included research the Trump campaign had conducted on Mr. Vance, was dated almost five months before he was selected as a running mate.

The latest intrusion upon Trump’s campaign from Iran is just one of multiple cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns that were identified during a Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

“The most perilous time, I think, will come 48 hours before the election,” the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, said, who was at the hearing along with executives from Meta and Google to brief lawmakers on their plans for safeguarding the election.


The New York Sun

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