The office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been linked to a cyber-attack on Senate Republicans during the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall, according to The Daily Caller.
A man was arrested in October for using allegedly using inside information to post the addresses of lawmakers that defended Kavanaugh — a cyber-attack known as doxxing.
The information leak was intended to intimidate or terrorize the conservative lawmakers into submission. The suspect was also charged with witness intimidation for trying to silence a coworker.
It turns out the suspect, Jackson Cosko, was a former information technology officer for top level Democrats and is well connected to Feinstein.
Cosko “was arrested for allegedly posting the personal information (or ‘doxxing’) of a number of senators including Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah on Wikipedia — with information such as their home addresses and phone numbers,” Fox News reported in October.
According to police, Cosko was confronted by a different Democratic senator’s staffer over the alleged attack. Cosko reportedly tried to intimidate that witness into silence.
“If you tell anyone I will leak it all. Emails signal conversations gmails. Senators children’s health information and socials,” Cokso reportedly emailed the witness. Cosko was working for Rep. Shelia Jackson, D-T.X., at the time of his arrest.
It was the third major scandal to come from Feinstein near the end of Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018. In fact, it was Feinstein herself that was accused of leaking the controversial letter by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault. And just two months earlier, The Washington Post reported that a Chinese government spy was found to have been employed by Feinstein for approximately 20 years.
According to The Daily Caller, the suspect in the cyber-attack on Republican lawmakers wasn’t just a simple intern. He is reportedly the son of an extremely wealthy and politically well-connected California family with close ties to top California Democrats.
“The suspect’s father, Greg Cosko, is the CEO of Hathaway Dinwiddie, a massive construction company that built a university building named after Feinstein’s husband,” The Daily Caller reported. “He serves on the board of San Francisco State University alongside Willie Brown, the California politician who said he helped make the career of California’s other Democratic senator, Kamala Harris, with an illicit affair.”
Prosecutors revealed investigators found cocaine and methamphetamine during a search of Cosko’s things at the time of his initial arrest, and speculated he may have been under the influence when, according to police, he used his government credentials to post personal information of some lawmakers, and broke into a senator’s office while threatening to release other information.
Those threats seemed to worry Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, who ordered him held without bond in October.
“These are serious offenses that were directed at one of the cornerstones of American democracy,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Demian Ahn.
He said Cosko was “caught in the act” of breaking into the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat for whom he had worked until being ousted earlier this year. Ahn said Cosko had once served as a tech staffer with administrative rights in Hassan’s office, suggesting he had access to more sensitive information.
Mr. Ahn said when police searched his home, storage unit and car they did find plans to target other lawmakers, and also found notes he’d written to himself laying out a checklist for trying to get rid of the evidence of his activities.
“It is virtually a hackers’ obstruction checklist,” the prosecutor said at the time.
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The Associated Press contributed to this article