GOP super PAC linked to Paul Ryan used illegally hacked material against Democratic House candidates

[CousinIT]

The Congressional Leadership Fund used info leaked by Russian hackers in campaign ads

While there has been a lot of speculation about what effect the hacking of Democratic operations by a group with alleged Russian ties had in Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, a new report from The New York Times illustrates exactly how damaging the hacking was for Democratic Congressional candidates in about a dozen “of the most competitive House races in the country.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an organization that seeks to elect more Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, was infiltrated by allegedly Kremlin-linked hackers, going by the pseudonym Guccifer 2.0, earlier this year. The same hacker or group of hackers pilfered thousands of documents from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Foundation. While Guccifer 2.0 has claimed to be a lone Romanian hacker, security researchers and others, including those in U.S. intelligence, say evidence shows the hacking came from Russia.

From the DCCC, Guccifer 2.0 released internal assessments of Democratic congressional candidates known as self-opposition research using social media to connect with local media and Republican operatives, the Times reported:

The intrusions in House races in states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina can be traced to tens of thousands of pages of documents taken from the D.C.C.C., which shares a Capitol Hill office building with the Democratic National Committee.

The document dump’s effectiveness was due in part to a de facto alliance that formed between the Russian hackers and political bloggers and newspapers across the United States. The hackers, working under the made-up name of Guccifer 2.0, used social media tools to invite individual reporters to request specific caches of documents, handing them out the way political operatives distribute scoops. It was an arrangement that proved irresistible to many news outlets — and amplified the consequences of the cyberattack.

https://www.salon.com/2016/12/14/gop-super-pac-linked-to-paul-ryan-used-illegally-hacked-material-against-democratic-house-candidates-report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

1. In other words...

...we have one party who plays politics in its rawest and dirtiest forms, and we have another party who couldn't even control the narrative and explain the most beneficial health care plan this country has seen since the creation of Medicaid.

Let's face it, fellow school librarians, china painting instructors, geologists, hipster gamers: We need to get some goons on our side.


We need a Karl Rove.