President Obama supporters appear to be using fake Twitter accounts to send pro gun-control messages to members of Congress, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman and conservative bloggers who also reviewed the messages said Monday.
Bloggers first spotted the trend and said they suspected some social media funny business because the senders had sent no other tweets, had no followers and followed nobody.
In addition, blogger Stacy McCain said his review found the majority of the accounts supporting Obama’s gun-control campaign were created less than 48 hours before a member of Congress was contacted.
The tweets in question included the #WeDemandAVote hashtag – which President Obama told gun-control supporters to include in their Twitter messages to Congress.
Stockman is among 16 members of Congress who appear to have received the tweets.
On Monday, the congressman suggested “Obama’s anti-gun activists” were behind the allegedly computer-generated messages, which his office called a “scam” similar to those selling “male enhancement pills.”
Stockman also said accounts are linked directly to a former Obama staffer and called on the president to denounce the spamming.
“Obama’s anti-gun campaign is a fraud,” Stockman said in a statement. “The White House has some explaining to do. To what extent is the White House involved in this attempt to defraud Congress?”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
A review of Stockman’s Twitter account by staffers and conservative bloggers shows at least 16 identical tweets.
The Stockman staffers said 10 were computer-generated and six came from real people, though only one lives in Stockman’s southeast Texas district. Two had only one follower, former Obama digital strategist Brad Schenck.
“Schenck somehow found and followed them before they ever tweeted anything, followed anyone or followed any real people,” Stockman said.
Obama and fellow Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass tighter gun-control legislation follows a series of mass shootings, most recently in December inside a Connecticut elementary school where 20 first-graders and six adults were killed.
Of the 16 members of Congress who have received the tweets, nine are Democrats and seven are Republicans.
“It looks like (the tweets) are all being run from some uniform website,” said @defendWallSt, among the first to discover the possible irregularities, in a tweet to FoxNews.com. “My presumption is that the accounts were registered by some organizing group or someone” from Obama for America farmed out the work
