Two years before Iranian hackers breached Donald Trump’s campaign this summer, they used a similar ploy to target a former administration official and onetime confidant of John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser and prominent Iran critic.

After infiltrating the person’s email account, the hackers sent what seemed like a harmless request to a group of fellow US-based Iran hawks, asking them to review a supposed book the person was writing about Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

“I am close to finishing the manuscript and have begun asking experts like yourselves to review the chapters,” read the email from June 2022, a copy of which was obtained by CNN.