Emails of top National Republican Congressional Committee officials stolen in major 2018 hack

The House GOP campaign arm suffered a major hack during the 2018 election, exposing thousands of sensitive emails to an outside intruder, according to three senior party officials. The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) were surveilled for several months, apparently. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack.

However, senior House Republicans — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) — were not informed of the hack until Politico contacted the NRCC on Dec 3 with questions about the episode. Rank-and-file House Republicans were not told, either. Committee officials said they decided to withhold the information because they were intent on conducting their own investigation, and feared that revealing the hack would compromise efforts to find the culprit. Party officials would not say when the hack began or who was behind it, although they privately believe it was a foreign agent due to the nature of the attack.