Law enforcement informed Biden campaign about hacked Trump material, official says
President Joe Biden’s campaign did not reach out to law enforcement after individuals associated with the campaign received hacked material from Donald Trump’s campaign in their personal email accounts in part because they had not opened the messages, according to officials with the campaign, law enforcement and news reports.
The Harris campaign said that law enforcement reached out to the campaign and that the materials in the emails were not used. The campaign did not provide a timeline of events.
Similarly, a law enforcement official familiar with the hacking incident told POLITICO Thursday that there’s no indication that the individuals associated with Biden’s campaign responded or took actions on the emails.
The campaign and law enforcement’s response came after U.S. investigators on Wednesday announced that Iranian hackers unlawfully took sensitive material from Trump’s campaign earlier this summer and sent it to people connected to Biden’s campaign. The material contained “an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
POLITICO first reported that Iran hacked Trump’s campaign and leaked material to journalists with various media outlets, including POLITICO, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
NBC on Wednesday reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, that people associated with Biden’s campaign that received the material possibly didn’t open the messages because they looked like phishing attempts.
Morgan Finkelstein, spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, said in a statement that the campaign “cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.” Harris’ campaign speaks for Biden’s now that he dropped out of the race.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner said on Thursday that political campaigns by law should turn over material to the FBI when they receive hacked material — though he stressed that he wasn’t implying any campaign didn’t turn the material over but was highlighting the need for such a law.
Sen. Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that cyberattacks in general are “coming and accelerating.”
“A lot of what they’re doing isn’t necessarily directed towards Trump or Harris or any particular candidate, they just are trying to sow division in our country,” he said.
Joe Gould and Maggie Miller contributed to this report.
CLARIFICATION: The headline of this story has been updated to better represent the article.
