Iranian hackers sent sensitive information stolen from the Trump campaign to President Joe Biden’s campaign earlier this summer, US investigators said, Report informs referring to Politico.
The emails were sent in June and July to individuals “associated with the Biden campaign” and “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and CISA said in a statement.
The Iranians have also continued trying to leak “non-public” Trump campaign material to media organizations since June, the agencies said.
The latest disclosure shed new light on the myriad tactics Iran has employed to damage the Trump campaign, and how persistent it remains despite US officials calling out its first attempt to leak stolen campaign documents this August. POLITICO first reported on the attempted hack-and-leak effort that month.
It is unclear to what extent the then-Biden campaign read or made use of the information the Iranians sent.
The three agencies said the emails were unsolicited and campaign staff did not reply to them.
Morgan Finkelstein, spokesperson for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, which replaced the Biden campaign, said in a statement Wednesday that “we have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware” of the information being sent to Biden campaign personnel.
“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,” Finkelstein said. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in US elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, said the development “is further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror.”
“Kamala and Biden must come clean on whether they used the hacked material given to them by the Iranians to hurt President Trump. What did they know and when did they know it?” she said in a statement.