The Federal Bureau of Investigation knew the Russian-linked Fancy Bear hacking group was targeting U.S. government officials for at least a year and failed to notify all but a handful of the targets, according to a report from the Associated Press.

In what could become a massive scandal for the bureau, AP claims to have interviewed nearly 80 Americans targeted by Fancy Bear but managed to turn up only two cases in which the FBI had warned the people they were being targeted. Worse still, a number of those targeted, which included “senior policymakers,” said that they discovered they had been targeted only after AP told them.

The Fancy Bear hacking group, which is believed to be linked to or have the support of the Russian military, first came to attention when it attempted to hack the White House in 2015. But it really achieved infamy after it was attributed as the group that hacked the Democratic National Committee’s database in 2016. The data from that hack, which was subsequently released by Wikileaks, was one of many reasons given by failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her loss to Donald J. Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In response to the new allegations, the FBI said only in a statement that “it routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information” without addressing whether or not they had failed in this instance. An unnamed senior FBI official elaborated further, saying that the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks. “It’s a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there,” the source added.

The failure of the FBI to notify seemingly senior policymakers and other government officials that they were being targeted by Russian-linked hackers could well be a matter of resource allocation. But it also raises questions as to why resources weren’t allocated, either by the Trump or the Obama administration.

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