WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday that former members of his presidential campaign staff had been targeted by hackers based in Russia in July 2016 and within the past 24 hours. "That effort was unsuccessful.”

“I would also inform the committee within the last 24 hours, at 10:45 a.m. yesterday, a second attempt was made, again, against former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to our internal information — again targeted from an IP address from an unknown location in Russia. Following the hearing, Rubio was asked by Sputnik News whether he was able to verify the person was actually in Russia and not just using a VPN to show a Russian address. Clinton Watts (of the Foreign Policy Research Institute) told Rubio that Russia actively worked to harm his election prospects:

“Russia’s overt media outlets sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views of the Kremlin … they were in full swing during the Republican and Democratic primaries and may have sinked the hopes of candidates who were hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed. “They were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season, and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed.”

“Senator Rubio, in my opinion, you anecdotally suffered from those efforts,” Watts told the Florida Republican directly.
During a Senate hearing, United States Senator Marco Rubio states that there have been post-election hack attempts against the U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rubio himself.