Photo courtesy of Pixabay / Edar.
Nick Baumann, a senior enterprise editor for the Huffington Post, has been contacted by the FBI for joking about destroying election ballots for Donald Trump.
On October 31, 2016, Baumann tweeted:
“I love my job working at a voting site in washington dc destroying trump ballots [sic]. ”
The following day, Baumann said the tweet was “a joking reference” to a fake news report circulated on right-wing blogs and social media, relying on a forged Wikileaks email stating that Democratic consultants and activsts were “pre-programming” voting machines in favor of Hillary Clinton. The erroneous news item was picked up by Drudge and Limbaugh as well.
Baumann says an FBI agent contacted him regarding his tweet. “We recently received some complaints regarding some online postings that were made. I don’t know if you know what that’s in reference to, but would you be willing to sit down with us for a couple minutes tomorrow morning, by chance?”
Although the meeting has yet to take place, Baumann writes that the “investigation is ongoing.”