Iranians indicted over alleged Trump campaign hack

Indictment describes long-running hacking campaign targeting intelligence officials, diplomats, and 2024 campaigns

A federal grand jury indicted a trio of Iranian nationals for what prosecutors say was a long-running government hacking campaign that targeted U.S. officials, including a hack against the Trump campaign this summer.

“These authoritarian regimes, which violate the human rights of their own citizens, do not get a say in our country’s democratic process,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference on Friday. “The American people, and the American people alone, will decide the outcome of our country’s elections.”

The charges, unsealed on Friday, allege that since 2020, three men, Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi, were part of a scheme on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to go after U.S. interests and “stoke discord and erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process.”

All three men are described as having their last known residence in Tehran.

The Iranian government denies responsibility for the hack.

Iranian hackers targeted U.S. officials and intelligence personnel (AP)

In August, the Trump campaign said some of its internal communications had been hacked, after news outlets began receiving unsolicited offers of information.

Though the charges don’t explicitly name the Trump campaign, the indictment describes the hackers targeting one presidential campaign and attempting to share information obtained with another.

Earlier this month, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Iranian hackers of sending stolen Trump campaign materials to people associated with the then-Biden campaign.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” the agencies said.

The indictment provides further details of how the hackers were able to steal the materials by sending phishing emails to members of the Trump campaign.

Once figures associated with the campaign opened the messages, malware entered their computers and stole private information.

Then, the hackers attempted to share the information with journalists and the Biden campaign, including a June message quoted in the indictment, which captures the alleged hackers using a fake persona and promising figures associated with the Biden campaign, “I’m going to pass some materials along to you that would be useful to defeat him.”

Over the course of the alleged four-year hacking scheme, Iran also targeted other influential U.S. figures, including a homeland security adviser to a former president, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and a former deputy director of the CIA.

The hackers also allegedly sought to compromise officials at the Departments of Justice, Defense, and State.

This week, Trump said he was briefed on threats against his life originating in Iran.

“Big threats on my life by Iran,” the Republican wrote on X. “The entire US Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again.”

Iran has reportedly launched multiple attempts to influence the 2024 election and go after U.S. officials, including allegedly creating fake news sites.

Asif Raza Merchant, 46, a Pakistani man with ties to Iran, was charged last month with taking part in a murder-for-hire plot against U.S. officials in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, a scheme that allegedly considered Trump as a possible target. Merchant has pleaded not guilty.

In recent months, federal officials have cracked down on alleged influence operations against the U.S..

They have prosecuted figures tied to Russian state media, seized 32 Russian-backed websites that officials say were designed to spread disinformation and boost the 2024 Trump campaign, and charged two employees of Russian state network RT with launching a $10m propaganda scheme using popular right-wing social media influencers.