Iranian hackers sent stolen Trump campaign information to Biden campaign aides, FBI says

Iranians sent “unsolicited emails” containing stolen materials not publicly available from former President Donald Trump’s campaign to people associated with his Democratic political rival, the FBI and two other government agencies said Wednesday.

The FBI and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said there is “no current information” indicating that recipients associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign responded to the emails, which government officials condemned as part of an effort “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our election process.”

The agencies confirmed last month that Iran was behind this year’s attempts to compromise both parties’ presidential campaigns, after Trump’s campaign accused Iran of an attempted hack in June.

Iranian hackers have continued to try to send stolen, non-public material related to the Trump campaign to media organizations since late June, according to Wednesday’s statement, which said the FBI is monitoring the activity.

The agencies also warned of growing foreign attempts to interfere in the U.S. election before November, particularly from Russia, Iran and China, countries that “seek to somehow exacerbate divisions in U.S. society for their own benefit and see election periods as moments of weakness.”

In a statement Wednesday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the Iranians want to help Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, “because they know President Trump will reinstate his tough sanctions and oppose their reign of terror.”

In a Truth Social post written entirely in all caps Wednesday night, Trump claimed that Harris and her campaign “illegally spied on me. To be known as Iran, Iran, Iran!”

Harris campaign spokesman Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has been cooperating with law enforcement since it learned of the hacking attempt.

““We are not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; several people have had their personal emails targeted with what appeared to be spam or phishing emails,” Finkelstein said in a statement.

Three federal law enforcement sources confirmed the Harris campaign’s statement to NBC News, saying law enforcement agencies tracked the stolen information from the Trump campaign and determined that several people associated with the Biden campaign received emails containing the information. The recipients never responded to the emails and may not have even opened them because they appeared to be phishing attempts, the sources added.

Law enforcement agencies have contacted those people and the Biden campaign to notify them about the emails, the sources said. The recipients have not contacted law enforcement agencies to notify them of what they have, but the sources said that is not a sign of anything being hidden or a crime being committed and that the employees likely did not realize what was in the emails.

A report last month by Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which tracks government-backed cyberattacks, said an Iranian hacker group linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted the Trump campaign and the Biden-Harris campaign in a phishing operation in May and June.

NBC News reported this month that the Justice Department plans to file criminal charges in connection with the hacking of the Trump campaign, according to two law enforcement officials. A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the country’s role in the operation.

The Justice Department has charged Iranians with election interference in the last presidential election. In 2021, the Justice Department charged two Iranians with a “cyber” campaign to intimidate and influence American voters during the 2020 presidential election.