A former aide to a Senate Democrat just got four years in prison for doxing five GOP Senators during the Kavanaugh hearings:
POLITICO – A former aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday for hacking Senate computers and releasing personal information online about five Republican senators out of anger spurred by their roles in the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan said the sentence for Jackson Cosko, 27, was needed to send a signal that criminal harassment driven by political motives would be punished severely in an era marked by extreme political polarization.
“We have…a society that has become very vicious,” Hogan said. “It’s very concerning to the court and unfortunate that you played into that.”
In April, Cosko pleaded guilty to five felonies, admitting that after being fired last year from his work as a systems administrator on Hassan’s staff, he repeatedly used a colleague’s key to enter the office, install keylogging equipment that stole work and personal email passwords, and downloaded a massive trove of data from Senate systems.
Cosko also acknowledged that after growing angry about the GOP’s handling of the Supreme Court nomination, he released home addresses and phone numbers of Sens. Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, and Mike Lee on Wikipedia. After initial press coverage of that doxing, Cosko released information about Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul.
“It was a rather vicious offense,” Hogan said. “That was totally unjustified….We need to send a message out there. We need to have some deterrent and community understanding.”
Prosecutors had sought a 57-month sentence, while lawyers for Cosko asked for a two-year prison term.
Prosecutors got 48 months of the 57-month sentence they were asking for, which is pretty good.
Cosko did apologize, according to Politico, and blamed his state of mind back then on substance abuse. He said he was consuming cocaine, psychedelics and alcohol on a daily basis.
Another Senate aide for the same Democratic Senator was also charged yesterday with two misdemeanors in Cosko’s scheme: aiding a computer fraud and evidence tampering.