Iranians indicted over alleged Trump campaign hack

A federal grand jury indicted a trio of Iranian nationals for what prosecutors say was a long-running government hacking campaign that targeted U.S. officials, including a hack against the Trump campaign this summer.

“These authoritarian regimes, which violate the human rights of their own citizens, do not get a say in our country’s democratic process,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference on Friday. “The American people, and the American people alone, will decide the outcome of our country’s elections.”

The charges, unsealed on Friday, allege that since 2020, three men, Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi, were part of a scheme on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to go after U.S. interests and “stoke discord and erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process.”

All three men are described as having their last known residence in Tehran.

The Iranian government denies responsibility for the hack.

In August, the Trump campaign said some of its internal communications had been hacked, after news outlets began receiving unsolicited offers of information.

Though the charges don’t explicitly name the Trump campaign, the indictment describes the hackers targeting one presidential campaign and attempting to share information obtained with another.

Earlier this month, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Iranian hackers of sending stolen Trump campaign materials to people associated with the then-Biden campaign.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt