Officials have indicated there currently is no evidence that President Biden’s campaign responded to emails allegedly sent by Iranian hackers, which reportedly contained materials taken from the campaign of rival Donald Trump. According to the FBI, these unsolicited emails were targeted at individuals associated with Biden’s campaign in what appears to be an attempt to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.

The FBI launched an investigation on August 12 after receiving a complaint from Trump’s presidential campaign regarding the hack that resulted in the leak of sensitive campaign materials. By August 19, intelligence officials confirmed Iran’s involvement in the breach.

On Wednesday, officials clarified that no members of Biden’s campaign had engaged with the emails, which were dismissed as spam or phishing attempts by several media outlets that had been contacted over the summer about the leaked information.

In response to the situation, Kamala Harris’s campaign labeled the Iranian emails as “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity,” noting that only a small number of individuals had received them. Notably, these emails were sent before the Trump campaign publicly acknowledged the data breach, and there is no evidence that the recipients were aware of the emails’ origins.

This revelation aligns with ongoing U.S. government efforts to expose what officials describe as Iran’s blatant attempts to interfere in the electoral process. These efforts include connecting a hacking and leak campaign to Tehran, a claim that Iran has strongly denied. On Wednesday, its permanent mission to the United Nations referred to the allegations as “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”

In recent months, U.S. officials have utilized criminal charges, sanctions, and public advisories to detail actions by foreign adversaries aimed at swaying the election. This approach marks a significant shift from the Obama administration’s response to Russian interference in 2016, which faced criticism for a lack of transparency regarding the issue that benefitted Trump in his campaign against Hillary Clinton.

The emails sent by hackers in late June and early July reportedly included excerpts from confidential materials belonging to Trump’s campaign, as indicated by a joint statement from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. These agencies assert that both the hack of the Trump campaign and attempts to breach the Biden-Harris campaign are designed to undermine voter confidence in the electoral process and sow division.

On August 10, the Trump campaign disclosed it had been hacked, claiming that Iranian actors had stolen and disseminated sensitive internal documents. Major news outlets, including Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, received leaked materials, although they have not specified the content.

Reports suggest that the leaked documents included a research dossier on Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance. Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Harris’s campaign, confirmed that the campaign has been cooperating with law enforcement since learning that members of Biden’s team were among the email recipients.

Trump’s campaign has characterized the leaks as “further proof that the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to bolster Harris. Intelligence officials believe that Iran opposes Trump’s re-election, fearing he would escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran, particularly following his administration’s withdrawal from a nuclear deal with Iran, the reimposition of sanctions, and the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani.

This incident is just one example of numerous cyber-attacks and disinformation efforts uncovered by technology companies and national security officials. During a recent Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, executives from Meta, Google, and Microsoft updated lawmakers on their efforts to protect the election from foreign threats. Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, remarked, “The most perilous time, I think, will come 48 hours before the election.”