The new indictment of Russian military officials who hacked Democrats during the 2016 presidential elections has Florida written all over it.
Two Florida Republicans and possibly a third — Rep. Brian Mast — play starring roles in the indictment, although none is named.
Unlike President Donald Trump‘s former political adviser Roger Stone and political operative Aaron Nevins, Mast’s identity is the least certain of any of the Florida Republicans hinted at in the indictment. The indictment released Friday details how a dozen Russian military officers used an online persona called “Guccifer 2.0” to disseminate information they stole from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee, which was led at the time by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz(D-Fla.).
Almost as soon as the indictment was released Friday, Florida Republicans, Democrats and even allies of Mast speculated that the congressman’s campaign was likely implicated — in great part because a former campaign consultant for Mast admitted last year to The Wall Street Journal and then to POLITICO that he used some of the hacked information in 2016.
Mast, through a spokesman, denied a link.
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The indictment is vague concerning the unnamed congressional campaign, saying only: “On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's opponent.”
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Nevins, another Republican consultant and blogger, separately became involved with Guccifer 2.0 when he saw news reports of its information and an invitation for reporters to get the hacked information. Under his @HelloFLAnews account, he direct-messaged Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter and on Aug. 22 received “approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC,” according to the indictment. “The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.”
“Basically if this was a war, this is the map to where all the troops are deployed,” Nevins wrote Guccifer 2.0. “This is probably worth millions of dollars.”
Nevins told POLITICO on Friday that the sheer size of the information was daunting. “I was like, holy s---, this is a lot of information, and I tried to farm it out to reporters. So District 18 [the Mast race], I sent information to TC Palm.” TC Palm is a local newspaper in the district that covers Florida’s Treasure Coast.
He also reached out to POLITICO, which wrote a story concerning the internal vetting of Democratic candidates by the DCCC.
Nevins said he “freely spoke” last year to federal investigators about his contacts with Guccifer 2.0 and said he is neither a suspect nor a target in the investigation.
Nevins said he did not communicate with Bustamante or anyone on the Mast campaign. And though Nevins is from the Fort Lauderdale area, home of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, he said the two men didn’t coordinate in talking to Guccifer 2.0.
Stone, who is under investigation in the wide-ranging probe, has denied wrongdoing but hinted he may be indicted for what he characterizes as overblown charges from an out-of-control prosecutor. In addition to communicating with Guccifer 2.0, Stone was also in communication with WikiLeaks, which is identified in the indictment as “Organization 1.”
According to the indictment, the conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0 were in repeated contact with him about the hacked data and asked him on Sept. 9, 2016, “What do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign[sic]."
"Pretty standard," Stone replied.
Read More: Florida Republicans play starring roles in Russia hacking indictment (Politico)