Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Alro Steel in Potterville, Michigan on Aug. 29, 2024 | Photo: Anna Liz Nichols
WASHINGTON — U.S. law enforcement on Friday announced charges against three Iranians who allegedly stole materials from former President Donald Trump’s campaign and tried to pass them to news media and Democrats in an attempt to influence the 2024 election.
The Department of Justice unsealed the indictment detailing a yearslong hacking scheme by Iran that targeted the email accounts of U.S. government officials, journalists, think tank experts, and most recently the 2024 presidential campaigns.
“The defendants’ own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a Friday press conference. Prosecutors believe the defendants acted from Iran and were never in the U.S.
“We know that Iran is continuing its brazen efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and advance its malign activities for the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), a designated foreign terrorist organization,” Garland said.
The unsealed indictment in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came three days after Trump’s campaign revealed the former president was briefed by the U.S. intelligence officials about “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him,” according to a statement Tuesday from Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director.
“Big threats on my life by Iran,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, posted on X Wednesday. Trump suggested at a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina, that Iran could be responsible for two assassination attempts on him.
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not published a statement on the matter. Its most recent press release focuses on the Iranian plot to hack Trump’s campaign.
‘It takes two to tango’
Global politics continued to top the U.S. presidential election headlines Friday when Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Trump Tower after announcing the invitation late Thursday at a meandering press conference where he promised, if elected, to strike a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia “quite quickly.”
The pair met behind closed doors in Trump’s New York City skyscraper on the sidelines of this week’s United Nations General Assembly, and one day after Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to meet with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and bipartisan lawmakers.
“After November we have to decide, and we hope that the strengths of the United States will be very strong, and we count on it. That’s why I decided to meet with both candidates,” Zelenskyy said during brief joint comments alongside Trump ahead of the meeting.
Trump, who refused during a live presidential debate to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia, detoured from that stance and hinted Friday that he wants a victory for the Western ally.
“I think the fact that we’re even together today is a very good sign, and hopefully we’ll have a good victory, because (if) the other side wins, I don’t think you’re gonna have victories with anything to be honest with you,” Trump said during the joint remarks.
During the exchange, Trump highlighted his “very good relationship” with Putin and said he could settle the war “very quickly.”
“But you know, it takes two to tango,” he said.
Harris at the border
Harris traveled to the U.S. southern border Friday to stump for a bipartisan border security deal that collapsed in early 2024 shortly after Trump publicly lambasted it.
Harris was scheduled to deliver what her campaign billed as a major speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she planned to talk about setting and enforcing new immigration rules at the border, according to a senior campaign official.
“Donald Trump cares more about self-interest than solutions. He wants a problem to run on, not a fix for the American people,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement Friday.
“When he was president, Trump created chaos at the border, taking our already broken immigration system and making it worse – leaving behind a mess for the Biden-Harris administration to clean up. Americans deserve a president who puts national security over their own self-interest – that’s Kamala Harris,” the statement continued.
Trump is attacking Harris over border crossings into the U.S. — his central campaign issue — and calling her by the dishonest nickname “border czar” and claiming she caused the “worst border crisis in the history of the world.”
“When you look at the four years that have taken place after being named ‘border czar,’ Kamala Harris will be visiting the southern border that she has completely destroyed,” Trump said at his Thursday press conference.
Biden, in February 2021, tasked Harris with strategizing ways to fight the “root cause” of migration from Central American countries, including economic insecurity, government corruption and gender-based violence.
Trump has historically painted with a broad brush the complex issue of immigration at the U.S. southern border, announcing his first presidential campaign in 2015 by describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” During his own presidency in 2018 he warned of immigrant “caravans” crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. He has promised mass deportations if elected in November.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicly releases numbers of border encounters, apprehensions and expulsions.