Washington: Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s election campaign office in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate to interfere in the 2024 election, according to the FBI and other federal agencies.

The emails were sent in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. They “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

There’s no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organisations approached have also said they did not respond. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts.

The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest US government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.

US officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to US audiences.

It’s a stark turnabout from the government’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticised for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump’s behalf as he ran against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The agencies have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

The FBI informed Trump aides within the last 48 hours that information hacked by Iran had been sent to the Biden campaign, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to speak because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.