When the House Jan. 6 committee released hundreds of documents from its investigation online at the end of the year, it inadvertently made public nearly 2,000 Social Security numbers belonging to high profile individuals who visited the White House in December 2020, according to a report.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the leaked Social Security information was included in a spreadsheet buried within the ‘massive cache’ of records from the committee’s work. Social Security numbers belonging to at least three members of Trump’s cabinet, a few Republican governors, and several Trump associates were reportedly compromised. The data was part of the White House visitor logs published by the committee.
While many Social Security numbers in the logs were redacted, the Post reported that around 1,900 of them were not. The Government Publishing Office (GPO), which was responsible for publishing the file, does not appear to have notified any of the individuals whose private information was released, the report said.
Those whose Social Security information was made public include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) and her family, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R), former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
Others include an unnamed federal district court judge and a federal appeals court judge, at least half a dozen people who testified before the Jan. 6 committee, and a lawyer who represented another witness before the committee, the Post reported.
After the leak was discovered, the spreadsheet containing the information was taken down from the website where the committee’s documents were made available. A GPO spokesman told the Post that the office ‘does not edit or alter materials provided by Congress for publication.’ The records were removed as a ‘temporary measure’ while GPO scans other documents for personally identifiable information, the spokesman said.
A spokesperson for former committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., did not immediately return a request for comment.
