U.S. indicts three Iranians for stealing Trump campaign documents

Three Iranian nationals have been indicted for hacking into the campaign of former President Donald Trump, stealing emails and then sharing them with news media, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Washington on Friday.

The three Iranians, identified as members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hired "malicious cyber actors" to hack into the campaign of an unidentified presidential candidate in May and stole documents from it.

U.S. officials have privately said that Trump's campaign was the victim of the attack.

Unsolicited emailsthat included the stolen material from Trump’s campaign were then sent to associates of his Democratic political rival. The three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who hired the hackers were identified in the indictment as Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri and Yaser Balaghi.

The personal email accounts of a former deputy director of the CIA, a former Defense Department official and an individual who appears to be longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone were also hacked.

Iran has denied the accusations, its ambassador to the United Nations calling them “entirely baseless, lacking any credibility and legitimacy” and “in no way acceptable,” the semi-official Fars news agency reported earlier this month.

The FBI and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said there was “currently no information” indicating that recipients associated with then-candidate President Joe Biden’s campaign had responded to the emails.

The hack against the Trump campaign is just the latest example of an increasingly brazen approach by Iran that includes alleged murder plots against dissidents and