'A Whole Lotta Weirdness': The Story of the Ohio Senate Candidate and a Sex-and-Swingers Website
EXACTLY ONE WEEK before the primary election, the Associated Press dropped a bomb on the Senate campaign of Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno.
The AP told Moreno’s campaign that it confirmed a profile on the “sex-and-swingers” Adult FriendFinder website had been established in 2008 by someone using Moreno’s email account from his car dealership. The Moreno profile was set up to search for “Men for 1-on-1 sex,” the AP reported.
The subject matter and timing of the story were terrible for Moreno, a 57-year-old married man and father. He was about to appear on stage with Donald Trump to get a needed boost in a tight and vicious three-candidate GOP primary against Matt Dolan, a state senator, and Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state. The campaign has already seen $50 million in TV ad spending. For about a month, Moreno’s campaign had kept the Adult FriendFinder story out of the press and largely off social media by: (1) denying any knowledge of the Adult FriendFinder profile; (2) accusing opponents of pushing a smear; and (3) arguing that the profile in question had never been activated with Moreno’s email from one of his Ohio car dealerships.
But the AP checked the Adult FriendFinder metadata—which became public after an infamous 2016 data breach—and used the expertise of a cybersecurity researcher to determine that someone had activated and authenticated the Adult FriendFinder profile by using Moreno’s email. The AP ultimately couldn’t say whether Moreno himself established, or knew about, the Adult FriendFinder account, which he continues to deny. The AP told Moreno’s campaign it was publishing its story soon.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/a-whole-lotta-weirdness-the-story
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