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Former Senate Staffer Admits To Doxxing Five Senators On Wikipedia (theverge.com)
Jackson Cosko, a former employee of Senator Maggie Hassan, has "admitted to breaking into Hassan's office after being fired, stealing data that included personal contact information, then posting that information online during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing," reports The Verge. The report says Cosko added several senators' private phone numbers and addresses to Wikipedia. He has pleaded guilty to computer fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making restricted personal information public. From the report: Cosko worked as a computer system administrator for Hassan, but he was fired in May of 2018. According to a plea agreement, he retaliated by using another employee's key to break into his old workplace at least four times, installing keyloggers on computers and using stolen login credentials to download gigabytes of data. While watching the Supreme Court confirmation hearing in September, Cosko "became angry" at Republican senators questioning Kavanaugh -- so he posted contact information for Senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch on Wikipedia. Cosko was interning for US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee at the time, and his changes were flagged by a bot that detects Wikipedia edits from congressional computers. The bot inadvertently helped spread the senators' information across Twitter, a process that prosecutors say Cosko aided by tweeting about his leaks.
Cosko struck again a few days later, posting information about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul -- who had called for an investigation -- on Wikipedia. He added comments calling himself a "golden god" who had a legal right to post the information, asking readers to "send us bitcoins." When a witness spotted him in Hassan's office the next day, Cosko responded with a threatening email titled "I own EVERYTHING." Cosko claimed he would release private emails, encrypted messages, and the health data and social security numbers for senators' children. "If you tell anyone I will leak it all," he wrote. Cosko was arrested soon after. Attorneys say Cosko could serve up to 57 months in prison, and he's required to give up all the equipment used in the crimes.
Cosko struck again a few days later, posting information about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul -- who had called for an investigation -- on Wikipedia. He added comments calling himself a "golden god" who had a legal right to post the information, asking readers to "send us bitcoins." When a witness spotted him in Hassan's office the next day, Cosko responded with a threatening email titled "I own EVERYTHING." Cosko claimed he would release private emails, encrypted messages, and the health data and social security numbers for senators' children. "If you tell anyone I will leak it all," he wrote. Cosko was arrested soon after. Attorneys say Cosko could serve up to 57 months in prison, and he's required to give up all the equipment used in the crimes.
History lessons for those not around to remember:
After the mass pardons by G H Bush of all the Reagan Iran-Contra criminals in '92, Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats.
And it was Republican Gerald Ford who pardoned his Republican predecessor in '74 even before charges were brought, "a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974."
The Republicans have been far more shameless in using the pardon to clear their cronies of crimes committed while in actual government positions.
By the way, the Attorney General at the time who advised Bush on the Iran-Contra pardons was our current AG, William Barr, handpicked by Trump to take over the Justice Department now...
By publishing their personal/direct cell/email/etc... info which isn't publicly available?
It sounds like Congressional Democrats are really bad at hiring staff.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
It doesn't mention that Sheila Jackson Lee was a Democratic Congresswoman, only that she was a US Representative. I've never heard of her before, so I certainly wouldn't know which political party she belonged to just by seeing her name, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
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Its puzzling to me how far detached from reality some of the far right are. If you take a look at democratic pardons you'll notice they aren't of political cronies, on the other hand if we look at Donald Trump he's only been in power a couple years and he's already done a number of politically motivated pardons (Arpaio, Scooter Libby, D'Souza), heck if we look at the past the most egregious cronyism pardon was Ford pardoning Nixon.
Are you out of your mind. Clinton took money for pardoning a convicted fucking child rapist. Fucking marxist dolt.
Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans filibuster a supreme court pick in the final year of a Democrat president (Obama's nomination of Garland) because Democrats started that tradition.
Really? Which nominee did they filibuster for over a year? (If you want to save some time, they didn't.)
Also, you're wrong about "filibustering" Garland. McConnell wouldn't even let there be a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, so there was no filibuster.
Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans refuse to impeach a sitting president, because during Obama's campaign he convinced his party not to impeach George Bush for cause
Wow do you not have a very good grasp of time.
The person who blocked impeachment was Pelosi. Obama's campaign had not started yet in January 2007, when Pelosi declared "Impeachment is off the table". Also, Obama at that point had very little institutional power, since he'd only been a Senator for a short time by that point.
(This despite Democrats holding firm majorities in both houses at the time.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Senate was 49+2 yielding a truly massive one seat majority.
House was 233 to 202, yielding a 31 seat majority.
For those who are not quite familiar with the Constitution, conviction in the Senate requires 67 votes.
Which 16 Republicans do you think would actually place party over country and convict? Keep in mind that almost all of those Senators are still in the Senate, and exactly zero of them are willing to put country over party under the Trump administration.