As partisan courts persist in rejecting the efforts of Republican states to fortify their elections, The Gateway Pundit has released a shocking report. The outlet alleges that Iranian hackers have breached the security, gaining access to the accounts of current and former U.S. officials, members of the media, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns. This urgent situation appears to demand our immediate attention.
On September 27, 2024, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment of Iranian nationals affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) that accused them of attempting to interfere in next month’s general election.
The indictment confirms that members of the IRGC were engaged in ongoing attempts by Iran to “stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process, and unlawfully acquire information relating to current and former U.S. officials,” The Gateway Pundit reported.
The indictment alleges that the hacking program to impact the 2024 election began around January 2020 and continued through last month.
The background of the story was revealed in an interview conducted by Jim Hoft, Editor and Publisher of The Gateway Pundit, and The Gateway Pundit Investigative Journalist Patty McMurray, who sat down with Heather Honey, a professional investigator and expert on the UOCAVA (Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) program.
The UOCAVA program, which allows overseas voters to participate in US elections, recently came into focus after Democrats began mentioning that overseas voters could be a key demographic in the upcoming election. This is particularly concerning in light of the alleged Iranian interference, as it raises questions about the security and integrity of the UOCAVA system.
The UOCAVA system, despite its noble purpose, is not without vulnerabilities. It allows non-military, overseas voters to participate in our elections without the need to prove their identity or, in many cases, their citizenship. This potential for abuse underscores the gravity of the situation and the need for immediate action.
McMurray previously reported that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stated its goal was to win the votes of nine million Americans through its Democrats Abroad website. The only problem with that is that there are only 4.4 million U.S. citizens living abroad, with only 2.8 million of those of voting age. That seems of little consequence to Democrats.
In fact, Reuters recently reported the DNC planned to spend $300,000 to register “9 million” UOCAVA voters leading up to the 2024 election; however, the government website FVAP, there are only 2.8 million eligible UOCAVA voters.
As The Gateway Pundit notes, assume half that 2.8 million vote Democrat; that only equates to 1.4 million possible Democrat votes in the 2024 election. However, as The Gateway Pundit notes, only a small number of overseas voters actually vote. In a curious statement, the DNC claims that “over 1.6 million Americans from the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin” live overseas and say they plan to “fight for every vote.” In other words, Democrats claim that of 2.8 million possible overseas voters, 1.6 million are from only seven states? That makes no sense.
What makes the UOCAVA system so ripe for abuse is how easy it is for anyone to obtain a UOCAVA ballot to vote in US elections. For example, the system allows online voter registrations without verification of identity or citizenship, as previously reported by The Gateway Pundit.
In most states, people in the continental United States, Hawaii, Alaska, and U.S. territories who want to register to vote must share the last four digits of their social security number and/or provide a driver’s license or state-issued identification. UOCAVA voters are not subject to such requirements.
Moreover, UOCAVA applicants can choose any state in which to vote, and no verification is conducted to ensure the applicants ever lived at the address they listed or that they have any connection to the state.
Given that the 2020 presidential election was decided by less than 20,000 votes among several states, the ability to mess with the UOCAVA registrations could prove troublesome in ensuring free and fair elections. This is especially significant considering the close margin of the 2020 election and the potential influence of overseas voters on the outcome.
In the 2020 hacking case, two Iranian nationals, Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, were able to access voter information from the Alaskan voter database. Both were indicted on a number of charges, including computer intrusion, voter intimidation, and interstate threat offenses, for their attempts to influence and interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
The two hackers “sent threatening voter email messages to intimidate voters, crafted and disseminated disinformation pertaining to the election and election security, and accessed and attempted to access, without authorization, the computer systems of several online United States media entities and states,” The Gateway Pundit wrote. The above was alleged to have taken place between August 2020 through November 2020.
Further, the Iranian hacker group uploaded a video at that time that showed how the UOCAVA system could be manipulated, and fake voters could be uploaded to it.
In the indictment which the Southern District of New York recently released, it said, in part:
In or about September and October 2020, SEYYED MOHAMMAD HOSEIN MUSA KAZEMI, a/k/a Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazem, a/k/a “Hosein Zmani,” the defendant, compromised a server located abroad (the “Overseas Server”) in order to send out the Voter Threat Emails.
The first phase of the Voter Intimidation and Influence Campaign occurred in or about September and October 2020, when the members of the conspiracy conducted reconnaissance on, and attempted to compromise, approximately eleven state voter websites, including state voter registration websites and state voter information websites.
While U.S. Attorney Damian WIlliams attempted to downplay the significance of the video in the sealed indictment, it “shows what appears to be files of voter data stolen from multiple states, including Alaska.”
The Gateway Pundit confirmed through an anonymous source that the names, social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers of Alaska residents in the video are indeed legitimate.
The sealed indictment's downplaying of the data breach appears laughable, especially when it calls the video “disinformation.” This is despite the fact, as The Gateway Pundit pointed out, that the video clearly demonstrated the Iranians’ knowledge of UOCAVA vulnerabilities and how they can be exploited.
The video in question was embedded with the Proud Boys logo when it was disseminated on social media, which immediately led election integrity apologists to label it “disinformation.” For example, the following was posted online:
“As with False Election Messages, the False Election Video contained multiple depictions of the Proud Boys logo, meant as a ‘false flag’ to deceive the recipients into believing that the Proud Boys organization had disseminated the False Election Video.”
The Gateway Pundit obtained a copy of the video mentioned in the DOJ report, which shows Iranian hackers showing how easy it is to load stolen voter data from Alaska into the UOCAVA system.
Democrat states are exploiting the vulnerabilities in the UOCAVA system to enshrine voter fraud in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. Five U.S. House members have sued two top election officials in Pennsylvania due to a PA Department of State policy to exempt UOCAVA applicants from any attempt to verify identity or eligibility.
Meanwhile, in what is sure to be a tight presidential election in less than two weeks, our election system remains vulnerable, and Democrats appear to have zero interest in addressing those issues.
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