Iran accused of interfering in 2020 US election

 Washington Times:

The Justice Department has accused Iranians of attempted interference in the 2020 election, including efforts to influence Republican lawmakers, Democratic voters and American news reports.

An indictment unsealed Thursday charged two Iranian nationals, Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian with computer fraud and voter intimidation. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, said it imposed new sanctions on six Iranian people and one Iranian entity.

“Working with others, Kazemi and Kashian accessed voter information from at least one state’s voter database, threatened U.S. voters via email, and even disseminated a fictitious video that purported to depict actors fabricating overseas ballots,” Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “The United States will never tolerate any foreign actors’ attempts to undermine our free and democratic elections. As a result of the charges unsealed today, and the concurrent efforts of our U.S. government partners, Kazemi and Kashian will forever look over their shoulders as we strive to bring them to justice.”

According to the indictment, the Iranian conspirators sought to compromise 11 states’ voter registration and voter information websites in September and October 2020, and they successfully exploited computers in one unnamed state.

The conspirators then allegedly sent messages to Republicans claiming Democrats intended to exploit state websites’ security vulnerabilities to edit mail-in ballots and register non-existent voters. The emails and Facebook messages were sent to GOP members of Congress, people associated with former President Trump’s campaign, and others.

The Justice Department also accused the conspirators of posing as Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, and emailing tens of thousands of registered voters to threaten harm to those people if they did not vote for Mr. Trump. The targeted voters were registered Democrats.
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There is more.

There should be little doubt that Iran wanted Trump to lose because of the sanctions he placed on the country and the withdrawal he did from Obama's goofy deal. 

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