A new report reveals that four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee senior had their email accounts hacked during the 2018 election cycle – but senior House Republicans were not informed of the breach until earlier this week.
According to a report in Politico, an NRCC vendor detected an intrusion into the email accounts of four senior aides back in April, prompting an internal investigation as well as the notification of the FBI about the security breach. Although thousands of sensitive emails were exposed to an unknown third party as a result of the attack, the party officials reassured Politico that donor information was not compromised.
It is more controversial, though, that senior House Republicans like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana were not notified when the attack occurred. According to Politico, they weren't aware of the attack until the publication reached out to the NRCC for comment about the story on Monday. Committee officials justified the decision by arguing that they were concerned revealing that the attack had occurred would make it more difficult to apprehend the culprit (Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, who served as NRCC chairman this past election cycle, did not reply when asked for comment by Politico).
Party officials also told Politico that, while they could not say when the attack began or who perpetrated it, they privately suspect that it was a foreign entity due to details about how the attack was committed.
The NRCC hacking story is particularly embarrassing for Republicans as they not only attempt to explain their loss of control of the House of Representatives during the 2018 midterm cycle, but also how President Donald Trump famously bragged to CBS News in July about how the GOP had better security in place than the Democratic Party when officials from that organization had their accounts hacked during President Barack Obama's administration.
TRUMP blames DNC for getting hacked: "They were doing whatever it was during the Obama admin, & I heard people were trying to hack into RNC too, but we had much better defenses so they couldn't."
"I think DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked." pic.twitter.com/mqtItbSa8i
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2018
"I heard that they were trying, or people were trying, to hack into the RNC too, the Republican National Committee. But we had much better defenses. I've been told that by a number of people. We had much better defenses, so they couldn't," President Trump told CBS' "Face the Nation" at the time.
He added, "I think the DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked. But I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses."
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