Kathmandu. An abrupt press briefing was called by the heads of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) on Wednesday, 13 days before the conclusion of the US Presidential elections on November 3. According to the information gathered by these organizations, both Iran and Russia have obtained voter registration information and are seeking to interfere in the voting process.

Florida, that is mostly a democratic leaning state, had voters complaining that they were receiving threatening e-mails from an account called info@officialproudboys.com. The content comprised of messages reading, “You are currently registered as a Democrat and we know this because we have gained access into the entire voting infrastructure. You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you. Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply. We will know which candidate you voted for. I would take this seriously if I were you.”

At a glance, the e-mails seemed to be coming from the Proud Boys, that has been described as “a far-right, anti-immigrant, all-male group,” by the BBC. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a prime US civil rights advocacy institution, has categorized Proud Boys as a “hate group,” known for furthering white nationalist agendas. Trump had previously urged the group to “stand back, and stand by,” when he was asked to address the issue of white supremacy and denounce it before the first presidential debate. His statements sparked widespread condemnation. Seven of these e-mails, however, were tracked back to IP addresses in the United Arab Emirates (the UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Estonia. A member of the Proud Boys claimed that they were not behind the activities.

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe in the Wednesday briefing stated that Iran is behind the spoof e-mails designed to intimidate the voters. He noted, “We have already seen Iran sending spoof emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President (Donald) Trump,” further adding that “You may have seen some reporting on this in the last 24 hours, or you may have even been one of the recipients of those emails.” He said that the actions were “desperate attempts by desperate adversaries.”

Some of these e-mails were also linked to disinformation videos about voter fraud, furthering an assumption of the voting ballots being compromised, a matter Donald Trump has been pressing upon throughout his campaign trails. CNN reports that the intelligence agencies have come a long way since the 2016 elections, recording Andrew McCabe’s statement that a serious response to the Russian interference was amiss at that point of time. The former FBI director did add that he wished for a more comprehensive information, saying that, “There should be really solid analysis underpinning that judgment and I just don’t think we’ve gotten enough of that detail from the information that was shared with the press this evening.”

Cristopher Wray, the Director of FBI, mentioned, “We are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections or any criminal activity that threatens the sanctity of your vote or undermines public confidence in the outcome of the election.”

Ratcliffe, who is a former Republican congressman, did not elaborate on his comments that these e-mails were engineered specifically to harm Trump’s image. He has been previously criticized for selectively declassifying information as per his political inclination. Nevertheless a senior intelligence official stated that the press conference was simply a follow-up to the claims made by Bill Evanina, the Director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center claims in August. Evanina had reported that foreign powers, especially Russia, China and Iran were looking towards interfering in the Presidential elections.

The official indicated that, “The Iranians are following US politics closely and understand the background of the Proud Boys recently coming up in the presidential debate and know that sending the emails they did would cause blowback in the media that would be damaging to Trump because of these perceived violent Trump supporters threatening Democrats.”

Foreign actors interfering in democratic elections is not a new and shocking phenomenon. What is surprising is the sophistication that these actors have employed over the decades. Facebook had reported in early September that it had closed more than 100 networks worldwide that were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) before large democratic elections since 2017.