Former Rep. Brad Ashford (D-Neb.) said on Friday that his congressional emails were hacked by Russians in 2016.
“With indictments today, I can reveal that my #Ne02 Congressional emails were hacked by Russian agents in 2016,” Ashford said on Facebook. “This is very real and we all should be concerned.”
Ashford was first elected to Congress in 2014. Two years later he lost his reelection bid in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
The former congressman’s statement came hours after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
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All 12 defendants were said to be members of Russia’s military intelligence agency, GRU.
A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Meredith Kelly, said in a statement published by Roll Call that the “DCCC was the victim of a cybersecurity intrusion during the 2016 election cycle, and this indictment relates to that incident.”
She said the committee is cooperating with the investigation and could not provide further comment.