Marco Rubio says former campaign staffers were the targets of Russian hackers

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday on Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) revealed that people who worked on his failed presidential bid were the targets of foreign cyber attackers.

Rubio said that in July 2016, not long after he announced he was running for re-election to the Senate, "former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to the internal information of my presidential campaign were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia. That effort was unsuccessful." A second attempt took place one day ago, he added, going after the same people and coming from "an IP address from an unknown location in Russia." This effort was also a failure.

Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Program on National Security, testified in front of the committee, telling the senators that "Russia's overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum. Senator Rubio, in my opinion, you anecdotally suffered through these efforts." Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) shared during the hearing that hacking attempts had been made against his office as well.

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