High-ranking officials at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation believe the charity’s internal servers may have been hacked as part of a wide-ranging probe, spurring the billion dollar non-profit to hire a cyber security firm.
The family foundation belonging to the former president and the Democratic party presidential nominee has been embroiled in scandals revealing that top aids to then-Secretary of State Clinton gave preferential treatment to million-dollar Clinton Foundation donors when she was the head of the State Department.
To date, there’s been no evidence that the Clinton foundation was, indeed, hacked.
But the potential of leaked evidence of the global nexus of influence peddling involving million dollar donations from foreign entities to the Clinton Foundation that often coincided with favorable State Department actions while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, spurred the Clinton Foundation to hire the security firm FireEye.
The California-based cyber forensics firm was brought in to examine the Clinton Foundation’s internal data systems after top officials saw evidence they might have been hacked, according to Reuters.
From Reuters:
Although no documents have emerged, the attacks have left some Democrats and Clinton campaign officials worried that the hackers might have obtained emails and voice messages that could be used to reinforce Republican charges that donors to the Clinton Foundation were rewarded with access to Clinton and her aides while she was secretary of state or to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Another concern: hackers or outlets such as the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website could release documents and emails damaging to her presidential campaign, several people familiar with the foundation’s activities said.
Top officials at the Clinton foundation as well as FireEye refuse to comment on the potential hack and the safeguards taken in response.
Reuters quotes federal officials who said they see parallels between the tactics used by the suspected Clinton Foundation hackers and those used by Russian intelligence agencies who allegedly recently targeted Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and the Democrats’ congressional fundraising committee.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in any hacking scheme, accusations pushed by the Clinton presidential campaign.
The potential of a pay-to-play scheme at the Clinton Foundation has been in the news since last spring, thanks to research that first appeared in The New York Times bestselling book Clinton Cash authored by Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer.
This latest Clinton Foundation revelation about a possible hack comes just weeks after the release of nearly 300 pages of emails belonging to then-Secretary of State Clinton revealed the nefarious relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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