Justice Department indicts three Iranians for hack-and-leak operation on Trump campaign
The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Friday charging three members of a notorious Iranian paramilitary group with hacking Trump campaign staff and leaking sensitive information to the campaign of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to undermine the former president’s re-election effort.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi were charged in the “wide-ranging hacking campaign” that employed fake online personas and targeted four Trump campaign operatives, current and former US government officials, journalists and others.
The hackers impersonated the wife of a sitting US Supreme Court justice, claimed to be running a Middle East non-governmental group that didn’t exist and sent an invitation to a phony holiday party at the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington.
Details in the filing point to former Special Iran Representative Brian Hook, US Institute of Peace distinguished scholar Robin Wright and a former US Ambassador to Israel with ties to a DC-based think tank 🀅;Dꦰavid Friedman as some of those targeted in the scheme.
David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel from 2020 to 2021, told The Post that he had been warned by the FBI in the past four years about a potential hack, but noted he had no association with any Washington think tanks and didn’t believe he was one of the victims.
Two other ambassadors to Israel — Martin Indyk, who served under former President Bill Clinton, and Thomas Nides, who served under President Biden — were part of the Council on Fore🌄ign 🦂Relations, a think tank that advocates on Middle East policy affairs. Indyk died in July.
Their charges, brought by the Biden-appointed DC US Attorney Matthew Graves, include providing material support to a terror group, computer fraud, wire fraud, identity theft and other crim﷽es as part of the years-lon♊g hacking campaign.
According to the 37-page indictment, the hackers sent out phishing emails and used other social engineering to compromise their victims’ accounts and eventually gain influence over a member of the Trump campaign.
“The message of US government is clear, the American people, not a foreign power decide the outcome of our country’s elections, not Iran and its malicious cyber activities as laid bare in today’s indictment,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Friday.
The US intelligence community briefed reporters in July and August about Iranian efforts to influence the 2024 election in favor of Biden, a🐲nd after he dropped out, Harr꧂is, eventually confirming the sophisticated hacking plot.
In June and July 2024, the three Tehran-based hackers began sending emails containing the non-public information stolen from Trump’s campaign to the Biden campaign.
The hack purportedly contained a dossier on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), whom Trump tapped in July as his running mate, along with prep material for Trump’s first debate against Biden on June 27.
“As you must know that the first debate is [Biden]’s ‘last chance,’ and if he loses the debate, you [Democrats] will have to replace [Biden] with another candidates,” read an email sent the same day as the debate to personal email accounts of people the hackers believed were on the Biden-Harris campaign.
The indictmen👍t shows the operatio🤪n began as early as January 2020, when Trump was still in office and ordered a fatal airstrike on IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani.
