Washington, Sep 19: Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a US government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.
The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.
The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets – Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post – were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account.
The source – an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” – passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen JD Vance. The document was dated Feb 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’s campaign, said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said. (AP)
Voters view Harris
more favourably
Until recently, Lillian Dunsmuir of Bullhead City, Arizona, “didn’t really think about” Kamala Harris and had no opinion of the vice president. But now she likes what she’s seeing.
“She’s funny. I think she’s very smart. She can speak well,” said Dunsmuir, a 58-year-old real estate agent. “I would feel safe with her because I think she can handle herself with foreign leaders. I like her because she’s for pro-choice, and so am I.” Voters view Harris slightly more favorably than they did in July, just after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The Democratic presidential nominee is now seen more positively than negatively. Former President Donald Trump’s favorability ratings remained steady, although the poll was conducted prior to the apparent assassination attempt of the Republican nominee on his golf course in Florida on Sunday.
According to the survey, about half of voters have a somewhat or very positive view of Harris, and 44% have a somewhat or very negative view. That’s a small shift since late July, just after Biden dropped out of the race, when views of Harris were slightly more unfavorable than favorable. Six in 10 voters, meanwhile, have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump, while about 4 in 10 have a somewhat or very favorable view of him.
Leaders of Democratic protest won’t endorse
Harris, warn against Trump
Leaders of a Democratic protest vote movement against the Israel-Hamas war said on Thursday that they would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid but strongly urged their supporters to vote against Donald Trump in November.
The “Uncommitted” movement drew hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries earlier this year in protest of President Joe Bide’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The group’s leaders urged the administration to change its policy on the conflict, warning that some Democratic voters might otherwise abstain from voting in November, particularly in swing state Michigan.
Despite months of discussions with top Democratic officials, discontent within the protest-vote ranks only grew after the Democratic National Convention when they were denied a speaker on stage and other demands weren’t met.
Harris’ “unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her”, movement leaders said in a statement.
Group leaders also made clear in their statement that they strongly opposed supporters voting for Trump or a third-party candidate who “could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency”. Instead, they urged voters to register “anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot”. Changes in views of national figures like Biden, Trump or Harris have been rare over the past few years. (Agencies)
