Quote:Mysterious online purchases of scores of web addresses implying US senators were “for sale” had originally been thought to be the handiwork of Russian agents until the culprit emerged Monday: Senate Democrats.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee acknowledged to the Associated Press that it had quietly bought the addresses using the suffix “forsale” in March for at least 27 incumbents running for re-election this fall.

The committee, which didn’t inform the senators of the purchases, said it acted to keep the addresses out of the hands of others with nefarious purposes.

The addresses, with a privacy guard, usually sell for about $18 each, the AP said.

“It’s a routine campaign practice to purchase URLs to stop bad actors from getting them, and if we eventually decided to develop a URL into a website then there would be a clear disclosure of who was operating it,” said Lauren Passalacqua, communications director at the DSCC.