Several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had their personal information published online during Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony Thursday.
The phone numbers, personal email addresses, and home addresses of Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and Orin Hatch (Utah) were published on their Wikipedia pages from someone working from a House of Representatives office.
The changes were recorded and tweeted out by Congress Edits, an automatic Twitter bot that tracks revisions made to Wikipedia pages from IP addresses in the U.S. Congress. While the tweets were quickly removed, the information had already been released and spread.
According to a congressional reporter for Politico, the edits were made shortly after Graham's fiery speech.
“It’s shocking that someone would post Senator Hatch and other Judiciary Committee Republican’s home addresses online, putting their families at risk,” Hatch’s spokesman, Matt Whitlock, told the Washington Post. “That it happened as they were asking questions in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing is just another indication of how broken this process has become.”
A spokesperson for Graham would only say that his Senate office was aware of the Wikipedia changes and would not say what steps, if any, his office had taken in response. A spokesperson for Lee declined to comment on the record. (WaPo)
“This is outrageous,” Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, tweeted. “Please stop.”
This is outrageous. Please stop https://t.co/kkByAg49qs
— Raj Shah (@RajShah45) September 27, 2018