On September 22 the Mike Honda For Congress Campaign filed a civil lawsuit against Ro Khanna and his Campaign Manager, Brian Parvizshahi. The Honda campaign is accusing Brian Parvizshahi of violating the Federal Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for illegally accessing the Honda campaign’s proprietary data, strategy and email lists. Ro Khanna has also been named as a conspirator under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Evidence appears to show both Khanna and Parvizshahi used their personal Gmail accounts to contact people listed in Honda’s data.
In court documents filed October 4, Ro Khanna’s Regional Field Director Michael Ambler and now resigned Campaign Manager, Brian Parvizshahi claim to have received an email forwarded to them by a yet to be disclosed source. The email contained 501 email addresses of Honda Campaign volunteers. In what could be an effort to distract from or explain away the more serious charges facing Ro Khanna and his Campaign Manager, Brian Parvizshahi, Ambler and Parvizshahi admitted to adding the 501 email addresses to the Khanna Campaign’s system.
Back in March of this year, Honda’s newly hired Field Director, Andrew Munson sent out an email to 897 people that had previously signed in as Honda volunteers. The email, “Introduction – Mike Honda’s New Field Director” was sent in two batches, 501 to names A thru M and 396 to names M thru Z. The names and email addresses were inadvertently revealed in the “carbon copy” field of the emails. Less than 6 hours later people on the A thru M list began receiving emails sent by Parvizshahi using his personal Gmail account and a few days later found themselves receiving emails from the Khanna Campaign.
What is not mentioned in Parvizshahi’s declaration is his and Khanna’s use of RevUp software developed by Khanna’s Campaign Chair, Steve Spinner and paid for by the Khanna Campaign. The RevUp software spiders through 1000’s of databases containing consumer data, and political and charitable contribution records.
As described in a March 23rd Bloomberg article:
You may know that your colleague drives a Prius and seems like she might support Sanders. RevUp can tell you that she also went to Stanford, joined the Sierra Club, loves skiing and poodles, and wrote Bernie a $500 check last fall.
After to being added to the Khanna Campaign’s email system without our permission, implied or explicit, I and another witness filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (May 5, 2016). We are arguing that using FEC records for eventual fundraising purposes violates FEC regulations. The complaint was deemed proper, within FEC jurisdiction and is currently under review.
Also in the Regional Field Director, Michael Ambler’s and others’ signed declarations are the claim that the Khanna Campaign had created a new email list. The list was to consist of addresses either purchased or from individuals that provided their emails, such as signing up at a Campaign event or website. Despite the claims, a day after the declarations were filed in Federal Court, the Khanna Campaign continued to send emails to known Honda supporters.
It appears the Khanna Campaign is either unable or unwilling to remove contact information from unconfirmed sources.
You can find previous CA17 articles HERE.
Follow our group here on Daily Kos or on our SVkos Facebook page.
I can be contacted at GlenThePlumberDK@gmail.com