December 25 2020
A federal investigation has concluded that Iran pushed an online hit-list targeting for death officials all across the US who disputed President Trump’s election fraud claims.
While the websites urged Americans to kill the “traitors,” the main purpose appeared to be to raise doubts about the honesty of the American governmental system among American citizens, a long-term goal of the Islamic Republic.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and ousted Homeland Security Department official Christopher Krebs were among the people whose images, home addresses and other personal information were posted on a website titled “Enemies of the People.” Crosshairs were superimposed on the photos.
“The following individuals have aided and abetted the fraud-ulent election against Trump,” the website shouted.
The “Enemies” hit list falsely accused swing-state governors, voting systems executives, Krebs and Wray of being responsible for “changing votes and working against the President” in a treasonous attempt to “overthrow our democracy.”
On December 23, the FBI and US Cybersecurity Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement saying they “possess highly credible information indicating Iranian cyber actors almost certainly were responsible” for the hit list.
Iranian spokesmen denied the allegation and tried to turn it against the US, saying it was Washington that regularly hit Iran with cyber attacks.
Many US and state officials who have said there was no major voting fraud have been assailed and threatened in recent weeks by Trump advocates.
However, the victims don’t necessarily blame Iran and the little-seen websites it promoted. Barb Byrum, a Democrat and the clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, told NBC News the impact of Iran’s hit list paled beside President Trump’s own repeated assertions denouncing election officials all over the country.
“Many of my dedicated colleagues in election administration have received death threats,” Byrum said. “The president of the United States has been encouraging this kind of domestic terror.”
The FBI and Homeland Security said Iran’s intent is “to create divisions and mistrust in the United States and undermine public confidence in the US electoral process.”
The target list broke into public view December 9, when an attorney for Krebs issued a public statement warning that a site “called ‘enemies of the people’ [is] proposing the assassination of various Republican and Democratic leaders who they falsely claim are complicit in manipulating the 2020 presidential campaign.”
In the ensuing days, the site and copies of it disappeared and reappeared in multiple places. The Washington Post identified at least three websites and 10 social media accounts that published it. The target list sometimes expanded, at one point including 21 people, including the governors of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan — all battleground states that Trump lost — as well as employees of Dominion Voting Systems, the makers of the voting machine that many Trump supporters assert changed votes from Trump to Biden.