The United Nations News Centre’s Twitter account was hacked late Thursday and a message telling American expats not to vote for Donald Trump was sent across the web.
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“I wanted to let you know that that tweet did not originate from the UN News Centre and that this was the reason for it being taken down. We’re looking into its provenance,” Ari Gaitanis, chief of news services section within the U.N. Department of Public Information, told the Washington Examiner.
The United Nations News Centre’s account had posted a message at 9:14 p.m. EST, asking American expats to share a voter registration tool on social media sites in order to boost overseas voting numbers. The UN-run news site linked to Avaaz, a privately owned activist organization focused on preventing Donald Trump from winning in November.
The link in the U.N.’s tweet went to a webpage, titled, “The October surprise that will end Trump.”
“At a time when Trump is trying to divide us, we could help defeat him if we all share this page with EVERYONE. Let’s reach every U.S. voter abroad,” the page states.
Within 20 minutes of its posting, the tweet was deleted. The U.N. News Centre has referred the public to its official website.
