An ex-aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is facing federal charges stemming from a plan to publicly post personal information about Republican lawmakers during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year.
Samantha Deforest Davis was charged with helping 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko, a former Hassan aide now serving a four-year sentence after pleading guilty to five federal offenses in the scheme. Cosko posted the home addresses and phone numbers of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) on Wikipedia.
Cosko was employed as a computer systems administrator in Hassan’s office, where he accessed the Republican lawmakers’ records. He was fired in May 2018 for not following office procedures.
After the firing, Cosko broke into the office and stole the records. He was arrested in October 2018 when he was found accessing Hassan’s system.
Illegal doxxing plan
Ms. Davis was employed in Hassan’s office from August 2017 to December 2018. She was fired when Capitol Police found evidence of her involvement in Cosko’s doxxing efforts.
Davis has been charged with one federal count of aiding and abetting computer fraud and an additional District count of attempted evidence tampering, according to the Washington Post. Prosecutors allege that Cosko persuaded Davis to erase information from Senate computers he had hacked.
No Democrat lawmakers have been charged in the matter. It has not been reported that Hassan or any Democrat had knowledge of or involvement in the doxing efforts.
However, the episode does illustrate the fact that at least some Democrats were so desperate to see Kavanaugh’s confirmation defeated, or were infuriated to see him ultimately succeed that they resorted to illegal measures to make their displeasure known.
Justice prevails
In an era where it can often seem like some politicians — especially those on one particular side of the aisle — get away with lawlessness all too often, it’s good to see people being held accountable for illegal activity. Hopefully, these prosecutions will send a strong message to others who might take the law into their own hands, believing they will suffer no consequences.
Scenarios such as this are why we have a Constitution and laws — to prevent those in power from abusing it and to stop those out of power from trying to seize it without going through the proper channels, namely elections and confirmation hearings.
Could you imagine if Kavanaugh had been taken down by the left rather than confirmed by the Senate? What if Hillary had been elected after cheating in collaboration with Fusion GPS and by disseminating the fake Steele dossier? How disheartening would that have been?
It’s good that we can still have faith in the system to thwart unlawful attempts from the left to win at any cost.
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