A former staff member who worked for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) was sentenced on Oct. 28 for her part in an attempt to burgle her former employers office, officials confirmed.
Samantha DeForest-Davis, 24, was sentenced to two years of supervised probation with 200 hours of community service and given a suspended sentence of 180 days in prison.
DeForest-Davis was also ordered to stay away from Hassans office and current and former staff, and to not use Tor or anonymized computer applications.
DeForest-Davis pleaded guilty on July 30 to the federal charge of aiding and abetting computer fraud, and to the District of Columbia charge of attempted tampering with evidence, according to a statement issued by the Department of Justice.
According to the statement, DeForest-Davis had been employed by Hassan and was also friends with Jackson Cosko, a former colleague at the office who had been fired in May 2018.
In what police have dubbed a “doxxing” scheme, DeForest-Davis helped Cosko, 27, burgle the senators office, where he illegally accessed Senate computers and stole information from them between July and October 2018.
According to Courthouse News Service, Cosko released personal information such as home addresses and phone numbers of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Wikipedia and Twitter.
The publication claims Cosko also publicized information about Kentuckys senior U.S. senator, Mitch McConnell, and then-Sen. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
It states that Cosko felt compelled to release the sensitive information after becoming enraged about the senators support for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, amid the sexual allegations made against him.
By August 2018, DeForest-Davis began to suspect that Cosko was breaking into the senators office and stealing information from Senate computers, yet she failed to report him.
On the night of Oct. 2, 2018, DeForest-Davis agreed to lend Cosko her keys to the senators office with the understanding that he would unlawfully enter the office to access Senate computers.
DeForest-Davis agreed to lend her keys to Cosko in return for money for her rent, according to Courthouse News Service.
Cosko then used the keys to break into the office that night and accessed information from a Senate computer.
However, he fled when he was spotted by another worker in the office who then reported the break-in to U.S. Capitol Police.
The morning after the break-in, Cosko returned the keys to DeForest-Davis and persuaded her to “wipeRead More – Source
