Report: Bush family’s email accounts hacked

The email accounts of six Bush family members and close friends were hacked, according to a report published late Thursday by The Smoking Gun.

{mosads}The hacker uploaded emails and photos to a website, revealing confidential information such as phone numbers and addresses, intimate details about former President George H.W. Bush’s recent hospitalization and self-portraits painted by former President George W. Bush.

A spokesman for the former president told the Houston Chronicle authorities have begun a criminal investigation into the hacking. 

According to the report, the hacker, who identifies himself as Guccifer, obtained emails sent between 2009 and 2012 belonging to Dorothy Bush Koch, daughter of the elder Bush, family friend Willard Hemingway and CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz — another Bush family friend — among others.

The emails included a street address and gate code for the younger President Bush, and updates on Bush senior’s apparently grim condition during his hospitalization for bronchitis late last year.

The emails indicate the family was planning a funeral and soliciting ideas for a eulogy. Bush was released from the hospital last month.

In one email, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) credited his father with helping restore former President Clinton’s “sordid reputation,” the Smoking Gun reported. “A very tough thing to do but with kindness, dad probably helped Bill Clinton than anything he himself has done,” Jeb Bush wrote. 

In another email, the website reported, George W. Bush sought help from family members in preparing a eulogy for his ailing father. “Hopefully I’m jumping the gun,” the 43rd president wrote. 

It’s the latest in a string of high-profile hackings. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve confirmed that hackers had breached an agency website and gained access to government information. 

And last week a handful of major news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, said they had been the victims of Chinese cyberattacks in 2012.