Tag: hacked
Hacked Court Documents Implicate Gaetz In Misconduct Or Worse

Hacked Court Documents Implicate Gaetz In Misconduct Or Worse

Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz's problems are growing by the day.

The New York Timesreported on Tuesday that a hacker obtained "damaging" testimony both from the Department of Justice investigation into the former congressman’s alleged child sex trafficking, and from the House Ethics Committee's probe into his alleged drug-fueled sex parties.

According to the Times, the hacker obtained 24 exhibits, including sworn testimony from two women: one who said she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17, and another who said she witnessed the two having sex.

The Times reported:

The material apparently taken by the hacker is unredacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gaetz than to his accusers, according to the person familiar with the hack. The hacker had not contacted the lawyers as of Tuesday morning, and it was not clear what motive the person might have.

Also looming over Gaetz is whether the House Ethics Committee will release its report from its yearslong probe into a number of allegations around him, including whether he “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.”

The committee will meet on Wednesday to decide whether to publicly release the report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to help Trump get Gaetz confirmed by keeping the report private, saying the Ethics Committee shouldn’t release the report because it would “be a terrible precedent to set” and “open a Pandora’s box” by saying the committee could release information on other former members of Congress. Gaetz resigned his seat shortly after Trump nominated him as attorney general, likely in an effort to keep this report from becoming public since the committee no longer has jurisdiction over former members.

House Ethics Committee Chair Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi said he won't be influenced by Johnson's desires.

“I appreciate Mike reaching out,” Guest told Politico, saying that Johnson called him to express his wishes for the report to remain sealed. “I don't see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide.”

Nearly 100 House Democrats also signed a letter urging the Ethics Committee to release the report.

From the letter:

We are aware that traditionally, the Ethics Committee stops investigations into alleged misconduct when a member of Congress resigns. However, there is precedent for the House and Senate ethics committees to continue their investigations and release findings after a member has resigned in a scandal. For example, the Committee continued investigating Rep. Eric Massa for inappropriate sexual behavior even after his resignation. Similarly, in 2011, the Senate Ethics Committee publicly released its report on Sen. John Ensign in the days following his resignation and forwarded the report to the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission.

We strongly believe that this situation meets or exceeds those standards. This is not a partisan issue. In a statement to reporters on November 14th, Republican Senator of Texas John Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted, “I think that there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”

Given the seriousness of the charges against Representative Gaetz, withholding the findings of your investigation may jeopardize the Senate's ability to provide fully informed, constitutionally required advice and consent regarding this nomination. Representative Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from Congress should not circumvent the Senate’s ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.

We urge you to immediately release the Ethics Committee’s report into allegations of serious misconduct by former Congressman Matt Gaetz.

Meanwhile, Gaetz’s former House colleagues have been trashing Gaetz publicly.

Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio said that Gaetz is "literally worse than gum on the bottom of my shoe.”

“I’m looking at him as a member of Congress and the job that he has done here, and it has been abhorrent,” Miller told CNN. “I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other of my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.”

Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia criticized Trump for nominating Gaetz in the first place, telling CNN of Trump’s decision to pick Gaetz, “It wasn't my decision to make, but I would have made it differently, I can tell you that."

What’s more, Politicoreported late on Monday that nearly a dozen Senate Republicans wouldn't commit to voting to confirm Gaetz. Of course, most Republicans are cowards who regularly cave to Trump, so you can't count on that many "no" votes in a potential confirmation vote. But the fact that they aren’t gung ho to defend Trump on this one is a telling signal that they don’t want to put their necks out for Gaetz.

Meanwhile, a poll from Echelon Insights, a Republican firm, found that Gaetz is the least popular of the cast of misfits Trump has so far nominated to serve in his administration. According to the survey, just 26 percent strongly or somewhat support Gaetz, while 37 percent strongly or somewhat oppose him—an 11-percentage-point deficit.

Even Trump seems to understand the peril Gaetz’s nomination is in.

The Timesreported that Trump believes Gaetz's chances at confirmation are less than 50-50.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

FBI Widens Probe Of Naked Celebrity Photos

FBI Widens Probe Of Naked Celebrity Photos

Los Angeles (AFP) — The FBI vowed to widen a probe into the massive hacking of naked celebrity photos if necessary, after new reported leaks including nude shots of Kim Kardashian.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation earlier this month after a first batch of pictures, including of “Hunger Games” megastar Jennifer Lawrence, was published.

On Saturday U.S. media reported that more nude celebrity photos, including reality star Kardashian and actress Vanessa Hudgens, had been circulating on social media.

The pictures, also including U.S. soccer star Hope Solo, appeared briefly on 4chan and Reddit, before being removed, celebrity gossip site TMZ reported.

BuzzFeed said that personal videos and photos belonging to actresses Aubrey Plaza, Mary-Kate Olsen, Hayden Panettiere, and Leelee Sobieski were posted, in addition to previously unseen pictures of Lawrence.

“The FBI’s investigation into alleged computer intrusion/theft is continuing,” FBI Los Angeles spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told AFP Monday.

“I’m unable to comment on specifics with regard to alleged victims, but any individual who believes they are a victim of these violations is encouraged to report it, if not already engaged with law enforcement,” she added.

Hackers first released a trove of nude starlets’ photos on September 1, after snatching them from Apple’s iCloud in what the tech giant has called a “targeted attack”.

The company has denied its cloud storage system was breached, suggesting that the celebrities had their accounts hacked by using easy-to-guess passwords, or by giving up their personal data to cyber criminals posing as Apple, a technique known as “phishing”.

In addition to Lawrence, celebrities whose pictures were allegedly stolen and posted online in early September included model Kate Upton, singer Avril Lavigne, and actress Gabrielle Union.

AFP Photo/Astrid Stawiarz

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Fox News Twitter Hacked, Resulting in Tweets About Obama’s (Imaginary) Assassination

Apparently Fox News was the victim of some hackers intent on sullying its until-now clean journalistic reputation over the holiday weekend:

A series of alarming Twitter posts about President Obama appeared on Fox News’s Twitter account for political news early Monday morning, and the Web site for the cable television network said it was a victim of hacking.

The Twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, one of many operated by Fox News, claimed that the president had been fatally shot while campaigning in Iowa, but gave no source for the news. On Monday morning, FoxNews.com first posted a brief statement saying that the reports were incorrect, and that it regretted “any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

The six messages were removed around noon on Monday, about 10 hours after being posted, but not before attracting a flurry of attention.

Because of the seriousness of the content, containing graphic, though fictional, descriptions of the president’s death, senior Secret Service officials gathered Monday morning to discuss them, said a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because of the investigation into the matter.

A spokesman for the Secret Service, George Ogilvie, said, “We are investigating the matter and will be conducting appropriate follow-up.” The White House declined to comment.

In a statement Monday afternoon, Twitter indicated that its own servers were not broken into; instead, the e-mail account associated with the specific Twitter feed had been compromised, and from there the hacker or hackers had been able to gain access.

Twitter referred other questions about the incident to Fox News; a spokeswoman there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FoxNews.com Twitter account for political news, which has about 36,000 followers, had been dormant since Friday, but at about 2 a.m. Monday, a message was posted there that eerily presaged the posts that would follow about the president: “just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th.” The next post said that the president “has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July indeed.”

With news that the VP just got on Twitter–Biden 2016 anyone?–we can be sure the Secret Service is watching this news medium with increasing skepticism, even as it shows its revolutionary muscle in countries from Iran to Belarus.

And Rubert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and a British tabloid that recently hacked a dead woman’s cell phone, can be confident his employees will return to doing their reportage on the serious issues confronting the nation. [The New York Times]

 

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