Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the DOJ charged three Iranians for allegedly hacking former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
The DOJ alleges that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) employed Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yaser Balaghi to target and hack politicians, the media, and others associated with political campaigns.
All three have Iranian citizenship and live in Tehran.
They began targeting Trump’s campaign around May 2024. However, the government admitted Iran started targeting Trump after his administration killed Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC Qods Force.
The government said the hackers tried to breach the Biden-Harris campaign, too.
GARLAND: “Moments ago, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging three hackers working for the Iranian government with material support for terrorism, computer fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft for their roles in these cyber attacks. The three hackers are Iranian nationals residing in Iran. As outlined in our indictment, the defendants, Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi conspired with others to deploy a years-long, wide-ranging hacking operation on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The operation targeted the email accounts of current and former American public officials, journalists, and most recently, individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns. The defendants’ own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”
They face the following charges:
The FBI began investigating when an anonymous online account “shared stolen campaign documents with reporters.”
The hackers even shared information with Biden’s campaign. Garland claimed no one in the campaign shared the information:
GARLAND: “Last week, the intelligence community reported that in late June and early July, Iranian malicious cyber actors sent unsolicited emails to individuals who were then associated with President Biden’s campaign. The emails contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public information from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails. The intelligence community reported that there is currently no information indicating the recipients of the emails replied.”
I don’t believe that.
Trump blamed Iran for the hack, which the government confirmed as true.
In August, Microsoft warned politicians and the government “that Iran-backed hackers had targeted a high-ranking official at an unidentified U.S. presidential campaign with a spear-phishing email in June.”
Politico said reporters received emails from an AOL account named “Robert” on July 22.
The email contained a “research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.”
However, the person dated the dossier to February 23, five months before Trump chose Vance.
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