Rubio says Russian hackers targeted his presidential campaign staff

WASHINGTON - Sen. Marco Rubio said hackers using an Internet provider from an unknown location in Russia tried twice to access internal information from former members of his presidential campaign team.

One of the hacking attempts occurred Wednesday, he said.

The revelation Thursday was made even more extraordinary by the setting in which it was disclosed: a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing looking into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign and President Donald Trump’s victory.

Rubio told committee members that both tries were unsuccessful.

Rubio, R-Fla., told of the hacking attempts after comments from a national security expert that Russian operatives tried to undermine the campaigns of presidential candidates viewed as hostile to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Russia’s overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views toward the Kremlin,” said Clint Watts, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute Program on National Security at George Washington University.

“They were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed,” Watts told the panel. “Senator Rubio, in my opinion, you anecdotally suffered from these efforts.”

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Rubio abandoned his presidential run in March after losing the Florida primary to Trump. In June, he reversed his pledge not to run for a second term in the Senate.

“In July of 2016, shortly after I announced that I would seek re-election to the United States 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,” Rubio said at Thursday’s Intelligence hearing. “That effort was unsuccessful.”

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The Florida senator went on to say that at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, a second attempt to hack those former presidential campaign staffers also was made.

“That effort was also unsuccessful,” he told the committee.

Rubio’s office said his staff would have no comment beyond the senator’s remarks.

Rubio, an advocate for human rights, has been one of Moscow’s fiercest critics in Congress. He has called Putin a “thug,” pushed for tougher sanctions against Kremlin leaders and often highlighted human rights abuses in Russia.

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An hour before attending the Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday morning, the senator was at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, criticizing the arrest Sunday of hundreds of protesters who assembled for an anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow.

“This is only the latest incident that reminds of how critical it is that the United States stands with the Russian people in their fight against a brutal, corrupt and repressive regime,” he said.

Contact Ledyard King at lknig@gannett.com; Twitter: @ledgeking