Democracy & Elections

United States Indicts Two Iranian Hackers For Election Interference

Emily Dai
Thursday, November 18, 2021, 2:10 PM

The Justice Department charged two Iranian nationals with helping orchestrate a cyber campaign to intimidate and influence American voters in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

On Nov. 18, the Department of Justice indicted two Iranian nationals for allegedly interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The defendants, Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, are accused of participating “in a coordinated and multi-faceted, cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters.” According to the indictment, as part of the campaign, the two sent threatening emails to Democratic voters purportedly from the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group that supported former President Trump during the election. Kazemi and Kashian also allegedly attempted to compromise 11 state voter registration and information websites and obtained access to the computer network of an unnamed American media company that provides content management for “dozens of newspapers and other publications.”

You can read the indictment here and below:


Emily Dai is a junior at New York University studying Politics and Economics. She is an intern at Lawfare.

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