Secret Service investigating potential Romney email hacking

The Secret Service is investigating the potential hacking of Mitt Romney’s personal email account, a spokesman for the law enforcement agency confirmed to The Hill.

Late Tuesday, the website Gawker published the account of a tip it received from a hacker claiming to have breached the former Massachusetts governor’s Hotmail account.

“I hacked in after finding the answer to the security question ‘What is your favorite pet,’” the hacker told Gawker in an email.

The hacker claims to have been directed to Romney’s personal account after the Wall Street Journal published emails obtained from Romney’s gubernatorial email account.

When Romney left office, his administration deleted emails from the computer server, and purchased and removed state hardware. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published correspondences that had not been destroyed, in which Romney defended the individual mandate for his Massachusetts healthcare law.

Neither the Romney campaign nor the Secret Service would confirm the hacker’s claim.

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