Kansas City Star: AG Hawley investigating Gov. Greitens’ use of Facebook, other social media
By Tessa Weinberg
Hawley’s office had previously agreed with Greitens that his social media accounts were private, telling the Star in February that it would not require Greitens to turn over private messages, names of users who were blocked or emails used to create his social accounts.
But newly revealed emails cast doubt on whether Greitens can withhold such information from the public.
Hawley’s office said it would begin the new investigation after The Star asked about emails that appear to show a state employee helping craft a Facebook post for the governor at a time when Greitens had only one Facebook page, which he had used for his campaign…
David Keating, president of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, which advocates for the rights of political speech and less regulation of campaign finance, said that if a campaign account is repeatedly used as the first platform to announce government business – as Trump’s often is – and is primarily managed by a government employee, then the nature of the “unofficial” account has changed.
“If there’s basically a state employee who just winds up managing the unofficial account all the time … that would be pretty heavy evidence that the unofficial account has become an official one,” Keating said.
