A former Senate staff worker will serve two years of probation for her role in helping an ex-boyfriend and fellow staffer break into a Senate office and hack computers, exposing the private information of five Republican senators who supported Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination.
According to federal prosecutors, Samantha Davis, 24, a former employee of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., gave her ex-boyfriend, Jackson Cosko, 27, her keys to break into the office and access the Senate computers, reports NPR.
He was then able to pull out personal information about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
Davis initially denied she knew anything about the incident, but later admitted to being part of the scheme, federal authorities said.
According to authorities, Davis let Cosko use her office keys to enter Hassan's office at night. He then edited the Wikipedia pages of the senators to publish home addresses, cellphone numbers, and other items of personal information.
Cosko had initially wanted to break into Hassan's office after he was fired as a systems administrator in May 2018 but later decided to use the information later to reveal information about Republican senators who backed Kavanaugh.
He was sentenced to four years in prison in June. According to prosecutors, Davis did not take part in his doxing activities, but she also did not report warning signs, or that at one point, her ex-boyfriend told her to wipe down the office's keyboards and unplug the computers.
She also deleted text messages she and Cosko had sent, but authorities were able to obtain them later with subpoenas.
Paul was the only senator who submitted a victim impact statement, claiming the actions caused emotional distress for him and his family after people used the contact information to harass them.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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