Politics

Hacker Leaks ‘Big Donor’ Info From Alleged DNC Breach

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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A hacker called Guccifer 2.0 has leaked what they claim are records of donations to the Democratic National Committee and other potentially damning documents.

The hacker, whose breach of the DNC’s computer systems was reported on Tuesday, released a slew of what they claim are donor records and other memos to The Smoking Gun website. The hacker, who is believed to be Russian, also released to The Smoking Gun and the website Gawker an opposition research file that the DNC created on Donald Trump.

The DNC, which is chaired by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, found out about the hack about six weeks ago, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

It is unclear if the documents published by The Smoking Gun and Gawker were actually taken from the DNC’s website. The party has yet to comment on the release.

While party officials said that no financial information was stolen in the hack, Guccifer 2.0 claims to have a trove of documents showing big-dollar donations from some of the Democratic party’s biggest contributors.

One document Guccifer 2.0 claims to have stolen is a self-explanatory “Big Donor List” that is published on a WordPress website that appears to belong to the hacker. It includes the names of major Democratic donors such as billionaire businessmen Daniel Abraham and Fred Eychaner. Both gave $1 million to the DNC, according to the document.

Another undated document is a list of donors which includes the names of several celebrities.

Actor Morgan Freeman gave $1 million, according to the list. Campaign finance records show that the “Shawshank Redemption” star gave that sum to the Priorities USA super PAC in 2012.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks, gave $3 million, according to that list. He also contributed that sum during the 2012 cycle.

One document on the Guccifer 2.0 website is a commitment sheet that appears to be for the month April 2016.

The spreadsheet lists dozens of donors alongside their donation amount and the fundraiser that solicited the funds.

Several longtime Democratic fundraisers are listed, including Elizabeth Bagley, a former ambassador to Portugal during the Bill Clinton White House and a longtime Hillary Clinton donor. Peter O’Keefe, a longtime associate of Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia and former chairman of the DNC, and Osman Siddique, the former ambassador to Fiji, are also fundraisers whose names appear multiple times on the list.

A similar commitment sheet from last July was also published online.

Guccifer 2.0, who adopted the moniker used by the Romanian hacker who infiltrated Sidney Blumenthal’s emails and claimed to have hacked into Hillary Clinton’s email server, says that more memos, reports, and emails will soon be made available from the hack.

“The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon,” the hacker wrote on the WordPress website.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said over the weekend that his group will soon publish Hillary Clinton emails. It is unclear if those emails are different from the ones that the Democratic presidential candidate gave to the State Department in Dec. 2014. (RELATED: Julian Assange: Wikileaks Will Publish More Hillary Emails)

Guccifer 2.0 also released 200-plus pages of research that the DNC had compiled on Trump. The hacker also uploaded reports showing election strategy memos for Hillary Clinton as well as memos detailing how to attack GOP candidates who have since quit their presidential bids.

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