President Donald Trump was absolutely delighted in the months leading up to the 2016 election by the hacking of Democratic operatives. Remember, in July, right after the Democratic National Committee member’s emails were posted online he called for more hacks.
“Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said Trump. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Then, when WikiLeaks released the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton campaign chairman, Trump cheered WikiLeaks. In the month leading up to the election, Trump said the word “WikiLeaks” at least 141 times, according to the Huffington Post.
Surely, at that time, Trump didn’t mean to invite hackers to attack his own people and publish their findings on WikiLeaks, but that is exactly what has started to happen.
HACKED
The hacks have not stopped with the Democrats.
Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly’s cell phone might have been targeted during Trump’s transition. On top of that, ousted White House communications director Hope Hicks said last month that one of her email accounts was hacked.
The most glaring example; however, lies outside of people actually in the administration. Republican fundraiser and Trump confidant Elliot Broidy was the most recent victim. His email account was hacked on February 28 by a group that called themselves LA Confidential.
BUSTED
While a lot of questions regarding foreign money that tie back to Broidy, the hackers didn’t find anything definitive concerning that. However, what they did find is, well…
See for yourself.
The hackers uncovered Broidy attempting to influence the outcome of a Justice Department investigation into a client of his wife’s law firm, but that wasn’t all. He also pitched an idea to Trump.
Broidy also wanted Trump to form a “Gulf-funded Muslim army” to fight wars on behalf of America.
GOOD ENOUGH
Suddenly, now that he was attacked personally, Broidy seems to think that hacking is wrong. He said:
“I’m not happy to see anyone hacked. That includes whether it’s Hillary Clinton or John Podesta, or anyone else. What happened in the 2016 election, or what’s happened to me, or what will happen to somebody else today or tomorrow — it’s just not right and I think we should work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
For his part, Trump continues to do nothing. Way back in January of 2017 he promised that he would appoint a team of experts and have an attack plan for how to deal with hackers in his first 90 days. He did nothing for months.
Then, he signed an executive order on cybersecurity that made almost no changes to current policy, which is where the problem lies, obviously.
Shockingly, Trump even floated the idea of forming a cybersecurity task force with Russia. He dropped that idea after lawmakers slammed him for it.
It remains to be seen whether or not the attacks on Broidy and the others will do anything to make Trump stand up and take action on America’s cybersecurity issue.
In the meantime, like waiting on who is to be fired next, it’s only a matter of time until another Trump minion gets hacked.
Feature Image via Pixabay.
