GOP Bigwig Says He Was on Ashley Madison for Research

The latest person to come out with a totally innocent reason for having an Ashley Madison account is Jason Doré, executive director of the Louisiana GOP. He claims that the account—created under his personal credit-card's billing address—was for "opposition research" being done by his law firm. "As the state's leading opposition research firm, our law office routinely searches public records, online databases, and websites of all types to provide clients with comprehensive reports," Doré tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Our utilization of this site was for standard opposition research. Unfortunately, it ended up being a waste of money and time." He signed up in 2013 and spent $176 on the site, according to leaked data.

According to the latest data dump, hundreds of government employees, some of them in the White House, have also been "researching the opposition," reports the AP, which lists numerous sensitive roles that the users are in but isn't naming them "because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime." One user is a Justice Department investigator who tells the AP that he "was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing" but says he would not have allowed himself to be blackmailed. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says he's looking into military service members' use of the website because "conduct is very important," CNN reports. (The leak led Josh Duggar to confess that he has been "the biggest hypocrite ever.")