The Justice Department on Friday unveiled criminal charges against three Iranian agents suspected of hacking into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and disseminating stolen information to news organizations.
The three accused hackers were employees of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and their operation also targeted a wide range of targets, including government officials, members of the media and non-governmental organizations, according to the Justice Department.
The Trump campaign revealed on August 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian hackers had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents.
Several major news organizations said they were leaked sensitive information from within the Trump campaign, including Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post, but declined to publish it.
US intelligence authorities later linked Iran to a hack of the Trump campaign and another attempt on the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign.
They indicated that the operation was aimed at sowing discord, exploiting divisions within American society and potentially influencing the outcome of an election that Iran perceives as “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests.”
Last week, authorities also revealed that in late June and early July the Iranians sent unsolicited emails containing excerpts of the hacked information to people associated with Joe Biden’s campaign.
None of the recipients responded. Harris’ campaign noted that the emails appeared to be spam or a phishing attempt and condemned the outreach to the Iranians as “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
The accusation comes at a time of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran, as Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel step up their attacks on each other, raising concerns about the possibility of all-out war, and as U.S. officials say they continue tracking Iran’s physical threats against several officials, including Trump.
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