House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Republican leadership Tuesday to denounce using leaked documents for campaigning purposes ahead of the general election.
Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, made the request in a letter sent this week to Speaker Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, as hackers widely believed to be working on behalf of the Russian government continue to publish leaked documents stolen through cyberattacks waged in recent months against various factions and figures of the Democratic Party.
At least one GOP-sponsored campaign ad has already used a leaked email to attack a Democratic candidate for Congress, and Mrs. Pelosi said lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “must present a united front in the face of Russia’s attempts to tamper with the will of the American people.”
“Russia’s cyberattack is an unprecedented assault on the sanctity of our democratic process. We must come together to say that defending our democracy from Russia’s meddling is more important than any advantage or disadvantage in this election,” she wrote this week.
U.S. intelligence officials have reportedly concluded with high confidence that individuals working on behalf of Russia are responsible for a wide-ranging cyber campaign that has successfully targeted dozens of different Democrats and affiliated organizations in recent months.
In addition to the widely publicized breach suffered by the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party’s convention in Philadelphia this summer, other victims of the hacking campaign have included the party’s House fundraising wing, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), as well as the personal email accounts of more than 100 various officials and organizations, according to recent reports.
Documents stolen from the DCCC’s computers have since been leaked online, including an internal memo used last month in an attack ad released by the group’s GOP counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Kelly Ward, the DCCC’s executive director, lashed out in response to the ad by accusing Republicans of “stooping to a shocking new low” by using unverified documents to influence federal elections. DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan said in a statement of his own that “NRCC’s use of documents stolen by the Russians plays right into the hands of one of the United States’ most dangerous adversaries.”
“It is my hope that you will join me in opposing the NRCC and the DCCC from using any documents from Russian criminal cyberattacks in this campaign,” Mrs. Pelosi wrote in her letter.
The House speaker’s office deferred questions Tuesday to the NRCC, The New York Times reported.
“Neither the NRCC’s chairman, Greg Walden, nor the speaker have control over what our independent expenditure unit does, which the DCCC chairman, Ben Ray Lujan, as well as Leader Pelosi are well aware of,” responded the group’s spokeswoman, Katie Martin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week formally denied having any involvement in the hacks.
“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” Mr. Putin asked of the DNC breach. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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