The Lincoln Project was briefly locked out of Twitter on Tuesday after sharing the contact details of two lawyers working on President Donald Trump's election challenges.
The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by a group of Republicans against Trump, tweeted the work phone numbers, email addresses, and photos of Ronald Hicks and Carolyn McGee to its 2.7 million followers. The tweet has since been deleted, but Business Insider has seen an archived copy.
"Make them famous," the group added.
Hicks and McGee, who work at Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, are challenging the result in Pennsylvania on behalf of the Trump campaign and calling for thousands of votes to be invalidated. As of Wednesday morning, President-elect Joe Biden was ahead by about 47,800 votes in the state, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Twitter told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that The Lincoln Project's tweet violated its rules on abusive behavior and must be deleted before account access could be restored.
"The account owner will be required to delete the violative Tweet before regaining access to their account," a Twitter representative told the outlet.
The Lincoln Project tweeted again early Wednesday, indicating the ban had been lifted.
Kurt Bardella, a senior advisor to The Lincoln Project, told The Daily Beast: "The information that was posted came directly from Donald Trump's own website and press release. Who knew that posting information that was put into the public domain by Donald Trump violated Twitter's rules?"
Insider and Decision Desk HQ called Pennsylvania for Biden on Friday, and other major news outlets made the call the next day.
But Trump cried foul on Saturday, making baseless claims that "tens of thousands of votes" were "illegally received" in Pennsylvania.
There is no evidence to support claims of voter fraud or electoral fraud. A group of 28 international election observers has said it found no signs of foul play during the election.
The Lincoln Project announced on Tuesday that it was launching an advertising campaign targeting Jones Day and Porter Wright, two law firms representing the Trump campaign in its legal challenges.
The Lincoln Project asked its followers on Twitter to contact employees of the firms and "ask them how they can work for an organization trying to overturn the will of the American people."
Porter Wright deleted its Twitter account late Tuesday amid a barrage of abuse, The Associated Press reported.
In a rare breaking of ranks by the standards of major law firms, several employees of Jones Day and Porter Wright told The New York Times that they were uncomfortable that their firms were helping Trump in his litigation with Pennsylvania, saying they feared their employers were helping to undermine US democracy
One lawyer from Porter Wright quit in protest, The Times said.
In a statement, Jones Day disputed reports that it was working with Trump on election-fraud claims.
"Jones Day is not representing President Trump, his campaign, or any affiliated party in any litigation alleging voter fraud," it said, adding that it was "representing the Pennsylvania GOP in pending litigation brought by private parties in April 2020 and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in August 2020."
The Trump campaign and Republicans have filed more than a dozen lawsuits in several battleground states to challenge the election results.
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