South Florida political consultant draws attention

For most of the past 15 years, Aaron Nevins worked behind the scenes in South Florida politics, as an aide to a state lawmaker and then as a lobbyist and political strategist.

For much of the last year, he’s been publicly identified as figure connected to the Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails as part of the 2016 elections — attention that’s intensified since Friday’s indictments of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016.

The indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein doesn’t allege Nevins was part of the hacking.

And it doesn’t accuse him of any criminal activity.

But language in the indictment — which doesn’t name Nevins — fits his receipt and dissemination of information stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by the Russians. The DCCC is the party campaign organization for U.S. House candidates.

The indictment states that in August 2016, the conspirators “posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.”

Nevins is a South Florida political consultant, a state and local lobbyist and operator of the political news website “Mark Miewurd’s HelloFLA!” (The name is a play on “mark my words.”)

Nevins told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last year that he was the recipient of a trove of information from Guccifer 2.0. He said Guccifer 2.0 wanted to send him so much information that he set up a Dropbox account to receive a large volume of data, which the hacker deposited there.

After Nevins reviewed the information, he said he published some on his website and also farmed out some to Florida reporters about congressional primaries in their areas.

Nevins referred an inquiry Friday afternoon to his attorney, Tony Bennett, of Palm Beach Gardens. “Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein was clear the latest indictments do not implicate any American citizen in criminal activity,” Bennett told the Sun Sentinel via email.

Last month, Bennett said in response to a Sun Sentinel inquiry posed to Nevins, that his client was voluntarily interviewed by Muller’s team last year. “Mr. Nevins is not a target or subject in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. Mr. Nevins has not received a subpoena of any kind.”

Ultimately he withdrew the plan.

In October 2016, he said he sent the Broward Sheriff’s Office a letter alerting the agency to his plan to have an event from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the same hours as voting.

He said he was turned off by the election — and wasn’t planning to vote for Donald Trump even though he was a Republican. So he decided to hold an amateur car race instead, for “fun.”

He said he had to select a road in unincorporated Broward, and that was “slim pickings.”

U.S. 441 is a corridor through many black communities, but Nevins said he didn’t select that roadway and the date, Election Day, to keep Democrats from voting for Hillary Clinton.

“I’m acting on my own. I am a Republican. There’s no denying that. I’m not coordinating with the Republican Party or Roger Stone or any of those people,” he said at the time.

The Sheriff’s Office responded with a long list of conditions Nevins would have to meet, and the consultant called off the event.

Nevins