DOJ Charges Three Iranians for Allegedly Hacking Trump Campaign
“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.”
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.”
GARLAND: "The defendants' [Iranian hackers] own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump's campaign in advance of the 2024 presidential election." pic.twitter.com/lm0SzKqk2R
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 27, 2024
They face the following charges:
- Count One: Conspiracy to Obtain Information from a Protected Computer; Defraud and Obtain a Thing of Value; Commit Fraud Involving Authentication Features; Commit Aggravated Identity Theft; Commit Access Device Fraud; and Commit Wire Fraud While Falsely Registering Domains.
- Count Two: Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization
- Counts Three through Ten: Wire Fraud
- Counts Eleven through Eighteen: Aggravated Identity Theft
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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Comments
Where’s Valarie Jarrett in all this?
Why would she be anywhere in this? Her only connection to Iran is that her parents happened to have been there when she was born. She’s never been an Iranian citizen, nobody in her family has ever been one, none of her ancestors were ever Iranian, she’d probably never even met an Iranian until she started working in the White House.
Bread and Circuses for the Masses.
They are being charged for getting caught.
I wonder if they worked for Harris’ DOJ or FIB? (Biden is still asleep)
They are trying to blame Iran for the assassination attempts, including future ones.
The United States not only hacks foreign campaign elections, we even help to assassinate foreign tyrants who we don’t want to be in power. This is standard operating procedure. And I, for one, am glad that is it. Israel does the same, but they are a lot better at it then we are.
Pretty much everybody is a lot better at everything than you are.
And? How is this relevant?
When we do it to another country it’s against that country’s laws. And when other countries do it to us it’s against our laws. That’s how this works.
We can indict their people who are living in their country for breaking our laws, and they can indict our people living here for breaking theirs. Neither of us is going to extradite our people to the other, so all it means is that both sets of people need to be careful where they travel.
““Moments ago, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging three hackers working for the Iranian government”
Who will hereinafter be referred to as Emmanuel Goldstein I, Emmanuel Goldstein II, and Emmanuel Goldstein III,
“All three have Iranian citizenship and live in Tehran.”
Meaning it’s all eyewash, baby.
“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.”
This doesn’t seem like a logical objection. It seems like only prudent practice to investigate and vet potential VPs far in advance of actually naming one. The report doesn’t say it was the ONLY dossier they downloaded or forwarded.
Big freaking deal, they just indicted three people they’ll never be able to arrest or try because you’ll never have jurisdiction to actually arrest them. It’s a bunch of garbage
It seems that there are effective alternatives to arrest. Do all 3 work from one location, or will there have to be 3 strikes? Maybe better yet, the failure of Iran’s 3 largest hydroelectric dams?
This doesn’t justify killing them. But if they ever set foot in the USA they can be arrested.
Exactly. They would have sealed it until subjects were in custody if the DOJ was serious about prosecuting them.
No, it’s standard procedure to publish it, since there’s no prospect of ever prosecuting them.
Did any of them sleep with Eric Swalwell?
Merrick Garland just indicted three guys he can’t arrest much less ever prosecute. It’s a perfect example of feckless law enforcement theater.
How does the FBI know that Trump knows Iran was behind the hacking.
Enough. The FBI was hacking into the campaign in service to the Harris campaign. Trump’s assertion it was Iran gave the DoJ the perfect excuse to indict Iranians to cover their own tracks.
LOL.
The Iranian partners of Traitor Joe and his junta are being charged because they stole information from the Trump campaign and couldn’t find anything damning.
Traitor Joe is fuming because all he could get from his massive efforts to steal the 2024 election are two failed assassination attempts and a bunch of useless computer files with some personal information on it – so they just ran with doxxing Vance with what they had.
This is like the dems’ insane quest for Trump’s tax records and their illegal pursuit of it until they finally managed to hit on the crime that got them what they wanted … and … THERE WAS NOTHING DAMNING!!!!. But no one was ever held to account for their crimes, the constant MSM yelping about Trump’s tax returns suddenly disappeared and all the leftists continued on as if it had never happened, moving on to their next set of crimes against America.
Meanwhile, Barky’s moron-level SAT scores and LSAT scores are held in higher security than the alleged gold at Fort Knox … not to mention the Khalidi tape.
Consider also that there have been NO reports of similar attacks on Harris’ campaign, and the Iran turned over the “Vance dossier” to the Harris camp through some formerly legit “reporter” (whose name is disturbingly similar to the Krassenstein porn twins) to publish and use to doxx Vance.
Coincidences?
I think Scott Adams has the best thoughts on this.
https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1839629469356822845?t=7rjpX03CfcgxxNAGszyWfA&s=19
Maybe they hacked Hunter’s laptop.