US government reveals charges against Iranians who hacked Trump’s 2024 campaign • Daily Montanan

WASHINGTON – U.S. law enforcement announced charges Friday against three Iranians who allegedly stole former President Donald Trump’s campaign materials and tried to give them to the news media and Democrats in an attempt to influence the 2024 election.

The Department of Justice has declassified an indictment detailing a multi-year hacking scheme led by Iran that targeted the email accounts of U.S. government officials, journalists, think tanks and, most recently, the 2024 presidential campaigns.

“It is clear from the defendants’ own words that they attempted to undermine former President Trump’s campaign for the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference on Friday. Prosecutors believe the defendants operated in Iran and have never been in the United States

“We know that Iran continues its brazen efforts to stoke dissent, undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral process and escalate its malign activities in support of the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), a designated foreign terrorist organization,” Garland said.

The unsealed indictment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came three days after the Trump campaign revealed that the former president had been briefed by U.S. intelligence officials about “real and specific threats from Iran that he will murder him.” , campaign communications director.

“Major threats from Iran regarding my life,” Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, wrote on Wednesday. During a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump suggested that Iran may be responsible for two assassination attempts against him.

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not released a statement on the matter. Her latest press release focuses on an Iranian plot to hack the Trump campaign.

“It takes two to tango”

Global politics continued to top the headlines Friday in the U.S. presidential election, as Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Trump Tower after announcing the invitation late Thursday in a winding press conference in which he promised that if elected, “pretty soon.”

They met behind closed doors in Trump’s New York skyscraper on the sidelines of this week’s U.N. General Assembly and a day after Zelensky traveled to Washington to meet with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and bipartisan lawmakers.

“After November, we have to make a decision and we hope that the strengths of the United States will be very strong and we count on that. That’s why I decided to meet with both candidates,” Zelensky said during brief joint comments with Trump before the meeting.

Trump, who did not want to say during the live presidential debate whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia, abandoned this position and suggested on Friday that he wanted the Western ally to win.

“I think the fact that we’re together today is a very good sign and I hope we have a good victory because (if) the other side wins, I don’t think you’re going to have a victory in anything to be honest with you,” Trump said during joint statements.

During the exchange, Trump emphasized his “very good relationship” with Putin and said he could end the war “very quickly.”

“But you know it takes two to tango,” he said.

Harris on the border

Harris traveled to the U.S. southern border on Friday to fight for a bipartisan border security agreement that collapsed in early 2024 shortly after publicly criticizing Trump.

According to a senior campaign official, Harris was scheduled to deliver what her campaign had announced would be a keynote speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she planned to talk about setting and enforcing new immigration rules at the border.

“Donald Trump cares more about his own interests than about solutions. “He wants the problem to continue, not the solution for the American people,” Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement Friday.

“When Trump was president, he created chaos at the border, taking our already broken immigration system and making it worse, leaving a mess for the Biden-Harris administration to clean up. The American people deserve a president who puts national security above self-interest – that’s Kamala Harris,” the statement continued.

Trump is attacking Harris over US border crossings – a major issue of his campaign – calling her the unfair nickname “border czar” and claiming she has caused “the worst border crisis in the history of the world.”

“When you look at the four years that have passed since she was named ‘border czar,’ Kamala Harris will be visiting the southern border that she has completely destroyed,” Trump said at a news conference Thursday.

In February 2021, Biden tasked Harris with developing a strategy to combat the “root cause” of migration from Central American countries, including economic insecurity, government corruption and gender-based violence.

Trump has historically painted the complex immigration issue at the U.S. southern border with a broad brush when announcing his first presidential campaign in 2015, describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” During his own presidency in 2018, he warned about “caravans” of immigrants entering the U.S. from Mexico. He has announced mass deportations if elected in November.

The US Department of Homeland Security publishes information on the number of border encounters, detentions and expulsions.

Back on the trail

The presidential and vice-presidential candidates are scheduled to make the following appearances:

• Harris will speak on Friday in Douglas, Arizona.
• Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks Friday in Walker, Michigan, and then at a town hall in Warren, Michigan.
• Trump is expected to attend Saturday’s Alabama-Georgia football game in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama, States Newsroom confirmed last week.
• Not to be outdone on the college football scene, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to attend Saturday’s Michigan-Minnesota football game in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• On Sunday, Harris will travel to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a campaign rally.
• Trump will also host a Sunday rally, this time in Erie, Pennsylvania.