FBI investigating alleged Iranian hacking of Trump, Biden and Harris campaigns

Despite Iran’s denial of interference in the U.S. presidential race, the FBI said Monday it is investigating allegations of espionage by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which on Saturday accused Tehran of hacking its communications. Although it did not provide any evidence, Trump’s team pointed specifically to information on the selection process that installed J.D. Vance as a vice-presidential candidate, which was published by the weekly Politico. The FBI, under scrutiny for security failures at the rally where Trump was the target of an assassination attempt, is also investigating an alleged hack targeting advisers to the campaign of President Joe Biden — who dropped out of the race on July 21 — as well as vice president and current Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, The Washington Post reported.

The former president and Republican candidate said on Saturday that Microsoft had informed his campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites. Trump then claimed that Iran was only “able to obtain publicly available information” but, as Reuters noted at the time, he was unable to provide any evidence to support the accusation. Some analysts suggested that the Trump campaign’s primary intention was to divert attention from the media prominence of Harris.

The FBI launched the investigation in June when Biden was still a presidential candidate, on the suspicion that Iran was behind attempts to steal data from two U.S. presidential campaigns, The Washington Post reported, citing sources close to the case. Before the existence of an investigation was confirmed Monday, the main U.S. media had been speculating about possible acts of hacking by China and Iran, which would replicate the disinformation maneuvers attributed to Russia in previous campaigns and in the 2020 campaign, to Tehran. In this regard, the spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, recalled that a U.S. intelligence report published last month concluded Iran is working to influence the current elections. “We are certainly mindful that they have this intent,” he said.

Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Through its spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House on Monday strongly condemned “any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institution.” Washington, Jean-Pierre added, takes “this type of reports of such activity extremely seriously” although she declined to “comment on the veracity of the claims that Iran was involved.”

The Trump campaign cited a report released Friday by Microsoft researchers stating that hackers linked to the Tehran authorities tried to access the data of a senior campaign official in June (Reuters cited Politico’s report that the data was about Vance and his weak points, a comprehensive 271-page dossier that The Washington Post also received). The Microsoft report, which has not been made public, added that the hackers took over an account belonging to a former Republican political adviser and used it to attack the target, whose identity it did not provide. The alleged dossier on Vance was sent from an account on a popular U.S. email server along with a document on Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who was once considered a Trump running mate.

For the past two weeks, Iran has been weighing up a retaliatory attack against Israel to avenge the assassinations of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut and of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. As such, the accusations of cyber espionage are of relative importance compared to the escalation of tension in the region — and the possibility of open war that would be the likely Israeli response to a hypothetical Iranian strike.

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