WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is preparing criminal charges in connection with a Iranian hack that targeted Donald Trump’s presidential campaigntwo insiders said on Thursday.
It was not yet clear when the charges would be announced or who exactly they would target, but they are said to stem from an FBI investigation into a burglary that multi-agency investigators quickly linked to an Iranian effort to influence this year’s U.S. presidential election.
The prospect of criminal charges comes after the Justice Department warned that countries including Russia and China are seeking to interfere in the presidential election between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, including through hacking and using covert social media campaigns to influence public opinion.
Iran “is making greater efforts to influence this year’s election than in previous election cycles, and that Iranian activity is becoming increasingly aggressive as we approach this election,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a speech in New York on Thursday. “Iran views this year’s election as particularly significant in terms of its impact on Iran’s national security interests, which makes it more likely to try to influence the outcome.”
The Trump campaign announced on August 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news organizations — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — leaked confidential material from the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal details about what they received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be an investigative dossier the campaign had apparently compiled on the Republican vice presidential nominee, a senator from Ohio. JD VanceThe document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
The two people who discussed the threatened criminal charges spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about a case that had not yet been made public.
The Washington Post was first to report that charges were being prepared.