Hacker Guccifer who infiltrated Clinton and Bush emails slams ‘hypocrisy’ in first interview out of prison

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The infamous Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who managed to break into the online correspondence of the Bush and Clinton political dynasties, fueling years of right-wing conspiracies, declared his project a “failure,” according to his first US interview since getting out of prison in 2021. Marcel Lehel Lazar, who served more than four years in federal prison in Pennsylvania, told The Intercept he set out to discover what he felt must be a hidden reason for America’s ongoing political dysfunction, but instead discovered a stranger and more mundane world, such as how former president George Bush likes to make paintings of himself in the bath. Buried within the email correspondence Guccifer obtained from Clinton family associate Sidney Blumenthal was the revelation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email account to conduct official business, a fact that became a long-simmering scandal that galvanised right-wing opposition against Ms Clinton’s presidential campaign and provided fodder for frequent attacks from Donald Trump. Later, an online hacker dubbing his or herself Guccifer 2.0 continued to target the leading Democrat during the 2016 election season, hacking into the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Ms Clinton’s presidential campaign, and then releasing the stolen emails online via WikiLeaks.