Kentucky's Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul joined a growing group of D.C. lawmakers who have had their private information leaked to the public.
Senate Majority Leader McConnell's home addresses in Kentucky and Washington, D.C., were added to his public Wikipedia page earlier this week, according to a report from D.C.-based newspaper
Roll Call.
Meanwhile, Kelley Paul, Sen. Paul's wife, wrote in a letter
published on CNN late Wednesday that "someone just posted our home address, and Rand's cell number, on the internet."
Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul, confirmed to the Courier Journal that the senator's information had been leaked online, a practice commonly called doxing. A spokesman for McConnell referred all comments about the doxing to the Senate sergeant at arms, the Senate's security official.
Late Wednesday evening, police charged a man in Washington, D.C., with posting "private, identifying information (doxing) about one or more United States Senators to the internet," according to the United States Capitol Police.
Jackson A. Cosko, 27, was a Democratic congressional intern,
Politico reported. Last week, the Wikipedia pages of Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch, of Utah, and Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, were changed to show their addresses, phone numbers and email address.
A U.S. Capitol Police spokesman did not return a request for comment asking if Cosko's arrest is connected to McConnell and Paul.
In her open letter to CNN, Kelley Paul said she now will "keep a loaded gun by my bed" and has sheriff's officers doing extra patrols around their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The leak of Paul's information this week is the latest threat the junior lawmaker has received.
Last year, Paul was on the baseball field where a gunman opened fire on congressional staffers and also hit and seriously wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican. Then in November 2017, Paul was tackled by his neighbor Rene Boucher at his home in Bowling Green during a dispute over lawn trimmings. The
attack broke several of Paul's ribs.
And in July, Paul said a man "
threatened to kill me and chop up my family with an ax."
McConnell has also been harassed recently for his support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct.
On Monday, McConnell was
confronted by victims of sexual assault aligned with a political group, the Center for Popular Democracy, as he walked through an airport in Washington, D.C.
McConnell was also harassed by protesters several times this summer over Trump's immigration policies and migrant families being separated at the border. In June, McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were confronted as they left a dinner at Georgetown University. A month later while in Louisville, McConnell was confronted as he left a restaurant on Bardstown Road. He was also forced to leave an Italian restaurant in Schnitzelburg after hecklers blared Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" and yelled, "no justice no peace."
McConnell said Wednesday on the Senate floor that he and his colleagues would not be intimidated by the threats.
"There is no chance in the world that they’re going to scare us out of doing our duty," McConnell said. "I don’t care how many members they chase, how many people they harass here in the halls. I want to make one thing perfectly clear: we will not be intimidated by these people."
