A major American political party is being accused of receiving “malicious” information from foreign actors, and failing to properly disclose it.
And despite past false accusations, no, it’s not the Republicans.
On Wednesday evening, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency put out a joint statement outlining some alarming threats to the forthcoming November general election.
In short, foreign actors stole material from the campaign of former President Donald Trump — the Republican presidential nominee — and tried to peddle those stolen goods to the campaign of then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
(Biden, of course, is no longer running for re-election, after being replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris in July.)
“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 taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” the ominous statement read.
The malicious actors didn’t stop there.
The statement added: “Furthermore, Iranian malicious cyber actors have continued their efforts since June to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”
While that’s concerning enough on its own, the statement did try to deflect blame from the campaign of Biden.
Should the Biden campaign have reported the incident immediately?
“There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied,” the statement noted.
However, while a follow-up report from Politico largely echoed the claim that Biden’s campaign didn’t do anything wrong, there was also a curious tidbit about something else the campaign didn’t do.
Namely, it appears Team Biden did not report to the proper authorities that malicious actors were trying to peddle stolen information to them.
“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,” the outlet reported.
Politico, not unlike the prior joint statement, did try to defend the Biden campaign’s inaction, as well.
Citing officials with the Biden campaign, Politico reported that those officials didn’t report anything to the proper authorities because they did not open those messages.
The Harris campaign also reportedly did not tell authorities. Instead, authorities reached out to them about the stolen materials, which the Harris campaign denied using.
Curiously, the Politico report added: “The [Harris] campaign did not provide a timeline of events.”
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