WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, wrote to Dr. Stephanie Tompkins, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), regarding a recently uncovered email that exposed a project targeting Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks.

The senators uncovered a Sept. 25, 2020 email between a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher and DARPA employees suggesting a plan to target the DNC and RNC networks. A DARPA employee referred to the project as “sensitive stuff . . . worth doing.” Further, the email appears to suggest that this examination was to be conducted without the prior knowledge of the RNC or DNC.

“This email exchange raises questions about the work of the [Enhanced Attribution] program and government employees responsible for it,” the senators wrote in their letter to DARPA Director Tompkins.

This letter follows the senators’ April 28, 2022 letter to DARPA about its reported collaboration with Georgia Tech related to the 2016 DNC server hack attribution. DARPA has failed to fully respond to this inquiry.

On May 12, 2023, Special Counsel John Durham referred to two DARPA-related matters to the Defense Department Inspector General and the Defense Intelligence Agency for further review – one involving a Georgia Tech contract and one involving “irregular conduct in 2016 of two former employees of the Department of Defense.”

The full letter can be found here.

Read more about the senators’ August 9, 2023 letter to Director Tompkins in the Daily Mail.

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