Intercept director says Tea Party group misrepresented donor support

The Intercept’s Director of Information Security Micah Lee said Tuesday that hacker-obtained data revealed the conservative political group Tea Party Patriots maintains a much smaller network of supporters than previously advertised. 

In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Lee said that an anonymous hacker shared data with him obtained through a Tea Party Patriots petition’s source code, which contained an administrator API key, or password, that enabled the hacker to gain access to the group’s database. 

Lee noted that while the data from the hack may be incomplete, it revealed in part that the group’s network is likely much less than the 3 million “activists” or “supporters” it has said backs it. 

“Basically, we got information from a little less than 500,000 people, and this was going all the way back to 2009,” he explained. “So, this whole 3 million people seems like that’s widely exaggerated.” 

Watch part of Lee’s interview above.