Democratic strategist Estuardo Rodriguez warns election hacking will eventually come to a “breaking point,” saying the federal government needs to find a way to address cyber threats against the U.S.
“There’s going to be a breaking point where our government has to decide at what level is hacking beyond the national threat and an actual attack,” Rodriguez, principal at the Raben Group, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton during a “Rising” panel discussion on Wednesday.
“And decide how to take that on and how to respond to that,” he added.
Rodriguez was responding to a question over reports that the GOP’s House campaign arm was hacked in the run up to the 2018 midterm elections.
Politico reported on Tuesday that several top officials on National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had their emails hacked. Even though the hack was first was first discovered in April, several top House Republicans, such as Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), were not informed of the attack until after the story broke.
Committee officials later came out and said that the group had been hacked by an “unknown entity,” but said they decided to withhold the information for fear of compromising the ongoing investigation into the attack.
The incident comes just five months after President Trump blamed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for getting hacked during the 2016 presidential race.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange published several emails that were hacked from the DNC in the months leading up to the election in an effort to undermine the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
In July, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 11 Russian military officers with conspiring to hack into the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) networks. Another officer was charged with conspiring to hack into a state elections board website.
During an interview with “Face the Nation,” President Trump blamed President Obama for Russian cyber aggression, arguing that the former president didn’t do enough to prevent cyber attacks on Democratic email servers.
Trump also claimed that the Republican National Committee was also targeted by foreign hackers but had “much better defenses.”
“I think DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked,” told CBS host Jeff Glor at the time.
— Tess Bonn
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