The email of Zach Dembo, the Democratic nominee for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, was found linked to an account on the adultery website Ashley Madison, according to a search tool that scans leaked emails from the 2015 breach. However, Dembo’s campaign says he has no knowledge of how his email ended up in the leak.

Dembo, a former Navy Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) officer and federal prosecutor, has his name and email publicly listed on the Kentucky Bar Association website. The search tool, created by a developer who previously built a site to check Adobe account security, identified Dembo’s email among the leaked data.

In 2015, a group of hackers known as “The Impact Team” released as many as 37 million emails allegedly used to create Ashley Madison accounts. The website designer noted that Ashley Madison did not verify email addresses during registration, meaning someone else could have accidentally or deliberately used Dembo’s email without his knowledge. He also mentioned that individuals with common names are more susceptible to such misuse.

Dembo served as a Navy JAG officer until 2017 before joining the Trump administration as a federal prosecutor. He later worked as an assistant U.S. attorney under the Biden administration in 2021 but resigned during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term to run for Congress on the Democratic ticket.

Sources