Fake Tweet Was Meant To Discredit Cranford Candidate, Mayor Says

CRANFORD — At Wednesday night's Westfield Town Council meeting, Westfield Mayor Shelley Brindle said that rumors in the fall about a Tweet purportedly sent from a Downtown Westfield Corporation account were fabricated. She charged that they were made up to discredit the Cranford Town Committee campaign of Kathleen Miller Prunty, who also serves in Westfield as interim executive director of the DWC.

In October, rumors began spreading on the internet that someone at the DWC had used the Corporation's Twitter account to write a negative Tweet against a Republican lawmaker.

Discussions popped up saying that the person had Tweeted from the DWC account in response to a Tweet by Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, R-Westfield, according to a story in TAPinto Westfield at the time. According to the story, the DWC Tweet asked Bramnick, “Do you think we needed the same common sense approach when you were Gov. Christie’s front man? Just curious.”

After rumors circulated on Facebook about the supposed DWC Tweet, Prunty — who was running for Cranford Town Committee as a Democrat — said that the account had apparently been hijacked.

"It’s also important for the public to know that we recently received the findings of the investigation into an alleged Twitter incident from October," Mayor Brindle said at Wednesday's meeting in Westfield, "in which accusations were made of a partisan post by the DWC account. After a thorough review by forensics investigators, they could find no evidence of unauthorized access to the DWC Twitter account, nor could they find evidence supporting the very existence of the alleged tweet. They concluded that the tweet was never posted, and was in fact fabricated and subsequently circulated on Facebook."

She added, "While I am grateful to have this matter thoroughly reviewed and put behind us, I am of course disheartened to know the true cause of this issue was the deliberate circulation of disinformation intended to discredit not only Kathleen Miller Prunty, who was a candidate for [committee] in Cranford, but the DWC as a whole — which is comprised of dedicated professionals whose contributions remain valuable to our town."

After Prunty's election in November, she was named deputy mayor in Cranford at a reorganization meeting earlier this month. She will be leaving her DWC post in late February, Brindle said.

It's not unheard of for government accounts to get accessed by unauthorized posters. Last week, an incident in Hoboken made the news when a retired police officer who still had access to a department Twitter account allegedly posted a negative response to a citizen who was concerned about victim-blaming after a car accident. According to a story on NJ.com, the retired police officer allegedly wrote, "Use common sense and look both ways, it’s called survival!" Police Chief Ken Ferrante pledged to investigate the matter, and the department Tweeted a series of apologies.

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