Friday, October 25, 2019

Neese: Russians hacked 5th District campaign emails


So... this landed in my inbox this afternoon. Make of it what you will.

RUSSIANS ATTEMPT TO HACK NEESE CAMPAIGN; CAMPAIGN SAYS EFFORT SAME AS EFFORT TO UNDERMINE TRUMP’S LEGITIMACY 

Oklahoma City, OK – Terry Neese, conservative Republican candidate for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, released the following statement today after determining the campaign’s email database had been hacked by Russia and other foreign entities.

 “Like President Trump, our campaign has been targeted by the Russian and foreign entities in an attempt to sway our electoral process and destroy our democracy here in the United States,” said Terry Neese. “Contrary to the mainstream media’s reporting, the Democrats are not the only candidates being besieged with downright invasive and illegal tactics by foreign entities. Russia has made it painfully clear its only goal is to spread disinformation and create chaos ahead of the 2020 elections, and after today’s discovery we know they have their sights set on the 5th District.”

On Friday morning, the Neese campaign recognized unusual activity on its campaign email database and subsequently determined it had been infiltrated by over 6,000 Russian and foreign bots. While the campaign can say with certainty that none of this foreign activity affected legitimate campaign subscribers in any way, we have confirmed these bots had been forwarding campaign emails to unknown users as a means to phish for personal information and spread disinformation about the race in the 5th District.

Neese added: “Russian influencers are once again trying to undermine the legitimacy of the election and do to us what they’ve tried to do to Donald Trump. Russian operatives continue to try to manipulate and operate in our electoral system and it has to stop. We see these abuses not just by the Russians, but liberal corporate tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. I will not stand for these kinds of attacks on my campaign or our democracy – the American people deserve better.”

from MuskogeePolitico.com