A hacker with alleged ties to Russia sent a Florida-based Republican political operative documents from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last year, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday the information was posted on a blog run by Aaron Nevins, the political operative, and then passed along to Roger Stone — an informal adviser to President Trump during the campaign.
Nevins contacted a hacker called “Guccifer 2.0” last year and asked the hacker to send him any information related to Florida after the hacker announced he’d obtained DCCC voter registration information.
Guccifer 2.0 obliged, and Nevins received 2.5 gigabytes of documents from the DCCC 10 days later.
The GOP operative posted the data on a blog he ran called HelloFLA.com, and Guccifer 2.0 later sent Nevins’ blog posting to Stone.
“I just threw an arrow in the dark,” Nevins, who set up a Dropbox account for Guccifer 2.0 to transfer data, told the Wall Street Journal.
The DCCC documents Nevins received showed how many people living in different Florida districts were strong Democratic voters, how many were likely to vote Democratic but “needed a nudge,” how many were frequent voters but not committed and how many were Republican voters.
Political strategists typically use this information to plan ad buys.
In addition to receiving information about Florida, Nevins also received information about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Nevins reached out to Guccifer 2.0 after it was reported the DCCC had been hacked last year. The GOP operative messaged the hacker on Twitter after Guccifer 2.0 asked reporters to send questions via the social media site.
After analyzing DCCC documents, Nevins described the data he received to Guccifer 2.0 as “the map to where all the troops are deployed” during a war.
The U.S. believes Guccifer 2.0 is tied to Russian military intelligence, and the hack of the DCCC occurred at the same time as intrusions at the Democratic National Committee and email accounts belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides. The Russian government denies any ties to Guccifer 2.0
The FBI is currently investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
