Free Republic

A former staffer for Democrats Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan was sentenced yesterday to 48 months in prison for doxing Republican members of Congress in 2018 during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In April, Jackson Cosko pleaded guilty to two counts of taking restricted personal information and making it public, and also one count each for computer fraud, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Cosko was upset at the Kavanaugh hearings on September 27, 2018, according to prosecutors, so he “maliciously publishing the personal home addresses and telephone numbers of Senators Lindsay Graham, Orrin...

A former aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is headed to prison Wednesday for what prosecutors said was the largest known data theft in Senate history. The former aide, Jackson Cosko, pleaded guilty in April to crimes related to an unparalleled effort to ransack a Senate office, extorting a Democratic senator, illegally harming Republicans for their political views, and blackmailing a witness. Prosecutors asked for nearly five years in prison for Cosko, a onetime congressional IT aide to Hassan. Cosko admitted he stole the New Hampshire Democrat’s data out of revenge for being fired, then used...

A former IT aide to New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan mounted an “extraordinarily extensive data-theft scheme” against the office, the culprit’s plea agreement states. The plot included the installation of tiny “keylogging” devices that picked up every keystroke. Between July and October 2018, former IT aide Jackson Cosko worked with an unnamed accomplice, a then-current Hassan employee, who repeatedly lent him a key that he used to enter the office at night and who allegedly tried to destroy evidence for him. Cosko accepted responsibility for the events revealed by federal prosecutors in court Friday. A statement of facts that...

Capitol Police on October 3 arrested 27-year old congressional staffer Jackson Cosko for posting on Wikipedia the private addresses of three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—what’s known as “doxxing” (a word derived from the shorthand for “document”). Cosko is facing serious charges that include illegally posting private information of public figures, witness tampering, threats, identity theft, and unlawful entry. In the mainstream media, Cosko is being portrayed as a hapless overzealous intern who didn’t even have the smarts to cover up his criminal act. His former boss— Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) has denied she knew anything about Cosko’s activities....