WASHINGTON – When the FBI said this week that Iran had tried to provide Democrats with material stolen from Donald Trump’s campaign, it was only the latest allegation of foreign interference with the U.S. election.
The 2024 presidential campaign is encountering a spate of efforts by adversaries to weaken faith in the outcome and potentially alter the results. While much of the attention has been focused on Iran, Russia is still seen as the biggest threat.
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The Biden administration has moved aggressively in recent weeks to call out the operations in hopes of alerting Americans so they remain vigilant to wide-ranging, often hidden, foreign efforts to influence their views on hot-button social issues as well as the candidates.
A look at the latest development and broader concerns about foreign election meddling:
What Iran is alleged to have done
Iranian operatives stand accused of hacking the Trump campaign and attempting to spread internal communications they pilfered. They also sought access to the Democratic presidential campaign, but there's no indication those efforts were successful.
Several media organizations said last month they received apparently stolen information but declined to publish it. Politico, for instance, reported that it began receiving emails in July from an anonymous AOL account identified only as “Robert” that passed along what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
The latest revelation came Wednesday when intelligence officials disclosed that Iranian operatives had offered people associated with the Biden campaign information stolen from the Trump side.
The FBI said a few people connected to Biden's reelection effort received unsolicited emails in late June and early July, before he dropped out of the race, that contained an excerpt “taken from stolen, non-public material” from the Trump campaign.
The outreach to both the media and to Biden campaign associates suggests Iran was trying to pull off a hack-and-leak operation reminiscent of the Russian election interference that was meant to benefit Trump during his 2016 race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
No signs Democrats accessed the stolen material
The effort fell flat: There’s no evidence anyone ever even responded to the emails.
Morgan Finkelstein, a spokeswoman for Democrat Kamala Harris' campaign, said in a statement that the material was not sent directly to the campaign but rather to just a few people associated with the campaign and that the emails looked like a phishing attempt or spam.
She said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement ever since being made aware that Biden associates were “among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity,” she said.
Trump's unsupported claims
Despite the lack of evidence that anyone connected to the Biden or Harris campaigns tried to take advantage of the stolen material, Trump has seized on the FBI announcement. He falsely claimed on his Truth Social platform that the Harris campaign had been caught “illegally spying on me.”
"This is real election interference, not the phony crap they’ve been trying to pin on me with Russia, Russia, Russia for years,” Trump said in a Wednesday night campaign appearance.
That's a reference to an FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russian operatives to tip the outcome of the 2016 election.
Though the investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy, officials did determine that Trump associates actively welcomed the Russian assistance and hoped to exploit the help for political gain. That includes Trump, who on July 27, 2016, memorably said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,”
That was a reference to the 30,000 emails reportedly stored on the private email server that Clinton, his opponent, used as secretary of state. Within hours of his statement, Russian hackers for the first time targeted Clinton's personal office.
Why might Iran be doing this?
One goal, according to U.S. intelligence officials, is to stoke discord in the United States and to undermine public confidence in the integrity of an election that Tehran sees as consequential for its own security interests.
It's also not the first time, either. In the 2020 election, American officials linked Iran to “a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects” that was likely authorized by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and implemented by Iran's military and intelligence services.
Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran.
Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge. A Pakistani man who spent time in Iran was recently charged in a plot to carry out political assassinations on U.S. soil, including potentially of Trump.
What other acts of interference have been detected?
Despite all the news around Iran, the U.S. government still regards Russia as the primary threat to the integrity of the election.
The Justice Department announced a pair of criminal cases this month that officials say exposes the lengths that Russia is prepared to go to influence the election.
One case charged two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, with funneling millions of dollars through shell companies to a Tennessee-based content creation firm to churn out English-language, pro-Russia videos, which have generated millions of views. Right-wing influencers linked to the Tennessee firm, Tenet Media, were kept in the dark about the Russian funding and worked unknowingly for a company that was a front for a Russian influence operation.
Another case involved a Russian government scheme to produce AI-generated content on bogus news websites that masqueraded as legitimate outlets.
Speaking Wednesday at a cybersecurity event, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said a “more diverse set of actors” than before was threatening elections.
“They are acting more aggressively,” Monaco said. “They are doing so in a much more polarized environment than we’ve ever seen before. And they’re utilizing more and more disruptive technology.”