(Reuters) – Multiple Iranians have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on charges over hacking Republican Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, Politico reported on Thursday.
Politico said the names of the defendants and the specific criminal charges were not immediately available. Without citing sources, it said a grand jury secretly approved the indictment on Thursday afternoon and that the Justice Department was expected to announce the charges as soon as Friday.
The Justice Department declined to comment and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump campaign said in August that some of its internal communications were hacked, and blamed the Iranian government.
Trump, who is running for second four-year term in the White House, said on Wednesday that Iran may have been behind recent attempts to assassinate him and suggested that if he were president and another country threatened a U.S. presidential candidate, it risked being “blown to smithereens”.
Iran said on Thursday that accusations that it had targeted former U.S. officials were baseless.
Trump made his remarks after U.S. intelligence officials briefed him a day earlier on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him,” according to his campaign.
Federal authorities are probing assassination attempts targeting Trump at one of his Florida golf courses in mid-September and at a rally in Pennsylvania in July. There has been no public suggestion by law enforcement agencies of involvement by Iran or any other foreign power in either incident
Also on Thursday, Trump raised the idea of making a deal with Iran aimed at ending hostilities if he is elected president on Nov. 5.
“I would do that,” Trump said, without offering details on what sort of deal he was talking about.
(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Steve Holland, Andrew Goudsward and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)
