Pennsylvania ballots
Mail-in ballots for the 2020 general election are seen before being sorted at the Chester County Voter Services office in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 23, 2020.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum
  • The Lincoln Project, a Republican anti-Trump PAC, was locked out of Twitter on Tuesday after sharing the contact details of the lawyers working on President Donald Trump’s election challenges.
  • Ronald Hicks and Carolyn McGreeand, of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, are working to challenge the result in Pennsylvania, which Decision Desk HQ and some other news outlets have already called for Joe Biden.
  • Trump has repeatedly claimed voter fraud without giving evidence, and has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in several battleground states to challenge their election results.
  • Twitter told The Daily Beast that The Lincoln Project’s tweet violated the platform’s rules on abusive behavior, and must be deleted before account access could be restored.
  • Kurt Bardella, a senior advisor to the group, told the outlet: “Who knew that posting information that was put into the public domain by Donald Trump violated Twitter’s rules?”
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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 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 McGreeand to its 2.7 million followers. The tweet has since been deleted, but Business Insider has seen an archived copy of the tweet.

“Make them famous,” the group added.

Hicks and McGreeand, 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 around 47,800 votes, according to Decision Desk HQ.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, published late Tuesday, Twitter said 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 spokesperson told the outlet.

The Project tweeted again at 12:40 a.m. ET on Wednesday, indicating the ban had been lifted.

trump supporter
A supporter of President Donald Trump wears a hat signed by the president in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on October 23, 2020.
KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images

Kurt Bardella, senior advisor for 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 the state of Pennsylvania for Biden last Friday, with some other major news outlets making the same call since. 

However, Trump cried foul on Saturday, making baseless claims that "tens of thousands of votes" were "illegally received" in Pennsylvania.

The is no evidence to support voter or electoral fraud. On Tuesday, a group of 28 international election observers said they found no signs of foul play during the election.

The Lincoln Project announced on Tuesday that it was launching an advertising campaign to target Jones Day and Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, two law firms representing the Trump campaign in their legal challenges.

The 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 Morris & Arthur deleted its Twitter account late Tuesday amid a barrage of abuse, according to the Associated Press.

In a rare breaking of ranks by the standards of major law firms, several employees of Jones Day and Porter Wright Morris & Arthur 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 undermine US democracy.

One lawyer from Porter Wright Morris & Arthur 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.

"Jones Day is representing the Pennsylvania GOP in pending litigation brought by private parties in April 2020 and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in August 2020."

In total, the Trump campaign has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in several battleground states to challenge their results.

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