The Kamala Harris campaign has denied all knowledge of an Iranian plot to hack Donald Trump’s website. The denial came after the FBI revealed that Iranian agents obtained information from the Trump campaign website and attempted to pass this on to the Biden campaign over the summer. The Republican’s team complained to the federal agency about hacking in August, and this was later confirmed, with evidence that Iran was behind it.
Emails arrived at the Joe Biden campaign soon after the hacking, offering information and data. Democrats say most of these were dismissed as spam, and little attention was paid to them. A spokesperson released a statement saying the Biden campaign, later replaced by Harris, had cooperated with law enforcement after becoming aware of the issue. “Individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation,” the statement added.
The hacking took place before Joe Biden withdrew from the race and Kamala Harris replaced him at the top of the ticket. However, Donald Trump blamed the Vice President and said she should “resign from politics in disgrace.”
The FBI has backed up the Democrats’ statement and confirmed there is no evidence that Biden staffers took up the offer of information from Iranian agents. The hackers sent emails to Biden’s campaign staff in June and July containing “an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign.” Additionally, Iran attempted to supply the hacked information to media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico.
While the outlets have largely remained tight-lipped, Politico said the emails arrived from an account holder named Robert, who offered to pass on the results of research conducted by Trump’s team to his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance. The document was dated February 23, five months before Trump announced his VP pick, and was sent from an AOL account.
The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the activity is a brazen attempt by Iran to interfere with American elections and to undermine public trust in election results.
