Former Senate employee pleads guilty to theft of personal data

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A former congressional staffer has pleaded guilty to five federal offenses that stem from illegally posting online the home addresses and telephone numbers of five Republican senators who backed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko could face a prison term of at least 30 months and as much as 57 months.

The offenses included making public restricted personal information, computer fraud, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Cosko was formerly employed as a computer systems administrator in the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.

He was fired from the job in May 2018 for what Hassan’s office said was failing to follow office procedures and his access to the senator’s office and her computer systems was terminated.

But court records said Cosko was angry over the termination and he began an “extensive computer fraud and data theft scheme that he carried out by repeatedly burglarizing Senator Hasan’s office.”

During these break-ins, Cosko copied dozens of gigabytes of data from Hassan’s computers, including dozens of user names and passwords belonging to Senate employees and “contact information for numerous sitting U.S. senators.”

In late September, while watching television coverage of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cosko became angry at several of the senators who are committee members. He acted on that anger, according to the court records, by “maliciously publishing” on Wikipedia the personal home addresses and telephone numbers of senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.