Iran blamed for hacks targeting Trump, Biden-Harris campaigns

Former President Trump sits in front of American flags.

By Eric Tucker

Aug. 20, 2024 7:11 AM PT

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials say they are confident that Iran was responsible for the hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, casting the cyber intrusion as part of a brazen and broader effort by Tehran to interfere in American politics and potentially shape the outcome of the election.

The assessment from the FBI and other federal agencies on Monday was the first time the U.S. government has assigned blame for hacks that have raised anew the threat of foreign election interference and underscored how Iran, in addition to more sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China, remains a top concern. Besides breaching former President Trump’s campaign, officials also believe that Iran tried to hack into the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The hacking and similar activities, federal officials said, are meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and possibly to 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,” officials said.

“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns,” said the statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

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 FBI statement was released at a time of significant tensions between Washington and Tehran as the U.S. hopes to halt or limit a threatened retaliatory strike on Israel over the assassination of Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. In addition, an Israeli strike last month in southern Beirut killed Hezbollah’s top commander, but while Tehran and Iran-backed Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate, they have not yet launched strikes as diplomatic endeavors and Gaza cease-fire talks continue in Qatar.

The U.S. did not detail how it reached the conclusion that Iran was responsible, nor did it describe the nature of any information that may have been stolen from the Trump campaign. But it said the intelligence community was confident “the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the Presidential campaigns of both political parties.”

At least three staffers in the Biden-Harris campaign were targeted with phishing emails, but investigators have uncovered no evidence the attempt was successful, the Associated Press reported last week.

“Such activity, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process. It is important to note that this approach is not new. Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in other countries around the world,” the FBI statement said.

U.S. officials have been on high alert in recent election cycles for foreign influence campaigns and outright interference as in 2016, when Russian military intelligence operatives hacked the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and orchestrated the release of politically damaging emails through the website WikiLeaks.

Iran has more recently emerged as an aggressive threat to American elections. In 2020, U.S. intelligence officials say, Iran carried out an influence campaign aimed at harming Trump’s reelection bid that was probably approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was the subject of an unusual evening news conference featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray and other officials.

U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump.

The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, the New York Times and the Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico 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 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.

The U.S. government’s assessment aligns with the findings of private companies.

Earlier this month, Microsoft issued a report on Iranian agents’ attempts to interfere in this year’s election. It said Iran had impersonated activists and created fake news targeted to voters on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The report also cited an instance of an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending “a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.”

In a separate report, Google said an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and Trump since May.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.