Roby Dem opponent Tabitha Isner tells NY Times Russian hacking claim was used as a ploy for campaign publicity

Back during the summer, Democratic congressional hopeful Tabitha Isner attracted national headlines when she claimed Russians had attempted to hack her campaign’s website.

“I was pretty surprised by that because I had bought enough bandwidth, enough hosting power, that it shouldn’t be an issue,” Isner said to Business Insider back in August. “I knew something was up and I had my web administrator go look into it.”

She went on to say the hacking attempt seemed partisan and that it appeared there was a lack of concern when hacks benefitted Republicans. As it turns out, some of that concern may have been a ploy for attention.

Unsure whether the Russians are still trying to hack our elections? Here's what our campaign website has been experiencing over the last week. #Russia #Hacking pic.twitter.com/XCKkkrDRDM

— Tabitha Isner (@TabithaK) July 18, 2018

In a profile of Isner for The New York Times Magazine by Ruth Graham, published on Wednesday, Isner acknowledged they saw the alleged hacking attempt as “an opportunity for publicity,” and said her campaign manager Megan Skipper implemented a strategy to alert the media because “why not.”

“A few days earlier, her web-hosting company alerted her to a spike in traffic on her campaign site,” Graham wrote for the New York Times Magazine. “Her webmaster found nearly 1,500 failed attempts to break in to the site, almost all of them from I.P. addresses in Russia. Isner and Skipper were alarmed, but they also figured the hacking was an opportunity for publicity. They emailed some local reporters, and Skipper tweeted at Rachel Maddow — why not? Only a week earlier, the Justice Department had announced indictments against 12 members of a Russian intelligence agency accused of launching a ‘sustained effort’ to hack Democrats’ computer networks.”

Their effort proved to be successful given it generated headlines from coast to coast. It raised the issue of further Russian interference in U.S. elections while it was a front-burner issue for Democrats given the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election led by former FBI director Robert Mueller.

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.