Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson suggested that the leak of nearly 2,000 Social Security numbers of Trump allies by the Jan. 6 Committee was “not an accident.”
Carson, whose information was included in the leak, appeared on Fox & Friends First to discuss the circumstances. He revealed that he had not been issued an apology and said he believed that the leak was intentional given the nature of the situation.
JAN. 6 COMMITTEE DOCUMENTS SHARE SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS OF 2,000 TRUMP OFFICIALS AND ALLIES
“You would have thought that maybe they would have at least had the courtesy to contact the people whose lives have been affected by this,” Carson said. “It’s been horrible … Obviously, I’ve put credit freezes on and put credit monitoring things into place. I’ve already had two incidents of fraud. It affects my family as well. And they say, ‘oh, it’s just an accident.'”
“Why is that all these accidents tend to be focused in one direction? You know, you have to wonder about that. And I wonder if maybe some of these people suffer some of the consequences. Maybe we should expose their PII,” he speculated.
Carson went on to decry the trouble the leak had caused him and the message it would send.
“This will have an impact for the rest of my life, and one of the horrible things is we’re sending messages to people: don’t get involved in government,” Carson said. “Don’t be on the wrong side because all of these coincidences will happen to you too.”
“It’s hard to be accidental because when I was at HUD, we paid a tremendous amount of attention to PII release, and it’s not an accident,” he concluded.
The Social Security numbers leaked were listed in the White House guest book, which was included in the Jan. 6 committee’s final report. The Social Security numbers of visitors were listed next to their names and were supposed to have been redacted in the version released to the public.
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At least three members of former President Donald Trump’s cabinet were affected by the leak. So were other big names, such as Gov. Kristi Noem of North Dakota, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, and Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina.
The committee has said that the leak was an accident.
