DOJ Charges Iranians Who Posed as Pro-Trump Proud Boys
DOJ Charges Iranian Hackers Who Posed as Pro-Trump Proud Boys
(Bloomberg) -- Two Iranian men were charged with interfering in the 2020 presidential election by hacking confidential U.S. voter information from at least one state election website and sending threatening emails to Democrats purportedly from the White supremacy group Proud Boys.
The emails, which the U.S. disclosed last year, warned tens of thousands of Democrats to vote for Donald Trump for president, according to an indictment released on Thursday.
“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” Matthew Olsen, the recently-confirmed head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement.
“The allegations illustrate how foreign disinformation campaigns operate and seek to influence the American public,” Olsen added. “The Department is committed to exposing and disrupting malign foreign influence efforts using all available tools, including criminal charges.”
The hackers also targeted Republican senators and House members, people on Trump’s presidential campaign, White House advisors and members of the media “falsely claiming that the Democratic Party was planning to exploit ‘serious security vulnerabilities’ in state voter registration websites to ‘edit mail-in ballots or even register non-existent voters,” according to the Justice Department.
In the false election messages, the members of the conspiracy claimed to be a “group of Proud Boys volunteers.”
The two Iranians charged are Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashia, who are identified as “experienced Iran-based computer hackers who worked as contractors for an Iran-based company formerly known as Eeleyanet Gostar, and now known as Emennet Pasargad.”
In addition to the threatening emails, hackers stole information on about 100,000 voters from one state’s “misconfigured” computers, the Justice Department said.
No evidence has emerged that the hacking and email operation was successful in getting any voters to change their party affiliation or who they voted for, Justice Department officials told reporters during a briefing on Thursday.
The Justice Department stopped short of accusing the Iranian government of being behind the hacking operation but said the two men worked for a company that had done work for Iran.
Pre-Election Warning
However, the top U.S. spy chief during the waning days of the Trump administration said in October 2020 that the Islamic Republic was behind hacking voter information and sending intimidating emails to Democrats purportedly from the Proud Boys.
John Ratcliffe, who was Trump’s director of national intelligence at the time, provided few details when he made the announcement.
The Treasury Department on Thursday announced sanctions against six Iranian nationals, including the two men who were charged, as well as the company they worked for, Emennet Pasargad.
Treasury described the individuals being sanctioned as “state-sponsored Iranian cyber actors.”
“Though Iran had already been a serious information operations player, the aggressiveness of this election operation surprised many of us who expected something like this from Russia,“ said John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis for the cyber firm Mandiant Inc.
The two Iranians are believed by U.S. officials to be in Iran and beyond the reach of extradition efforts, though the charges and sanctions likely will limit their international travel and ability to do business.
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