A second aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., has been sentenced in a scheme to break into Hassan’s office to obtain and publicly post the personal information of several Republican politicians amid contentious confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The 24-year-old former aide, Samantha Deforest Davis, was sentenced to two years of supervised probation with 200 hours of community service, with a suspended sentence of 180 days in prison. She was ordered to “stay away from [Hassan’s] office to include current and former staff, and to not use Tor or anonymized computer applications,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Davis was a staff assistant in Hassan’s office from August 2017 until last December. She was fired after Capitol Police discovered her involvement in the so-called “doxxing” effort.
Prosecutors said Davis helped 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko, another former Hassan aide who has pleaded guilty to five federal offenses (including two counts of making public restricted personal information, and one count each of computer fraud, witness tampering and obstruction of justice).
Prosecutors said that Davis was persuaded by Cosko to “wipe down” Senate computers he had hacked on Oct. 3, 2018, the morning after the break-in. That effort was unsuccessful because another employee was in the office early that morning. Cosko was arrested that same day.
Cosko admitted to using Davis’ keys to get into Hassan’s office the day before, and prosecutors said Davis “understood that Cosko needed the keys to unlawfully enter the senator’s office to access Senate computers” at the time, the DOJ said. – READ MORE