It’s a political whodunnit that cuts across the nation’s culture wars just as the veepstakes reach fever pitch.
J.D. Vance’s Wikipedia change was edited on Tuesday to bring his views on abortion more in line with those of former President Donald Trump, according to an online log of changes. But who was behind it?
The Ohio senator is one of the frontrunners to be named as Trump’s veep.
And the edit will only add to intense speculation that a decision has already been made given that the editor’s username was ‘Chuengsteven,’ a not very well-disguised reference to the Trump campaign’s chief spokesman Steven Cheung.
The user account was created on Tuesday morning and made one small tweak to Vance’s page.
‘He has also said that abortion laws can be set by states,’ was changed to: ‘He has more recently said that abortion laws should be set by states.’
It is a small but potentially significant change that could patch up a potential weakness of Vance’s when it comes to campaigning alongside Trump.
In the past he said he backed a national 15-week abortion ban but late last year (after Ohio voters supported protections for abortion) he admitted that most Americans did not support a blanket prohibition.
In contrast, Trump danced around the issue before finally announcing in April that restrictions should be left to the states.
The online tweak reduces differences between Vance and his potential boss, at least as far as Wikipedia users are concerned.
And then ‘Cheungsteven’ vanished.
But who was responsible? Was it a Vance loyalist doing clean-up on social media and trying to persuade the Trump campaign that their man is in lockstep with the former president?
Was it a Biden aide making mischief?
Or did Cheung, a veteran political operative, slip up by giving the game away?
No, he told Dailymail.com.
‘If I wanted to stealth edit a Wikipedia page I wouldn’t use a username that’s my own name,’ he said.
Instead he suggested a smear by the Biden campaign in an effort to cause trouble.
Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, said: ‘We have no idea what this man is talking about.’
A cybersecurity expert and a source at Wikipedia both said it was impossible to trace the user.
The mystery comes at a time of feverish interest in all the potential V.P. picks and their records.
Donald Trump faces off in the first presidential debate with Joe Biden in Atlanta on Thursday night amid reports that he could announce his running mate this week.
Or the big reveal could come during the run up to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month, when Trump will officially become the party nominee.
The issue of abortion could be a bone of contention there, when delegates decide the party platform.
The existing platform, agreed in 2016 and unchanged when Trump ran again in 2020, demands a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks and calls for an amendment to the Constitution affording the unborn the same rights as a person.
Anti-abortion groups fear an attempt to soften the policy and bring it into line with Trump’s ‘leave it to the states’ approach.’
It is not the first time Wikipedia edits have been used to promote or punish political figures. The history of the online encyclopedia is littered with mischief-making.
In 2006, an investigation by Wikipedia found dozens of examples of pages associated with politicians to have been edited by their staffers, sometimes from from IP addresses associated with the House of Representatives or the Senate.
Among them were Biden staffers who removed or modified details of plagiarism episodes, and rejigged discussion of a potential 2008 White House run to put it in more favorable light.
Sometimes edits they have taken on a geopolitical character, hinting at the involvement of state agencies. In October 2019, for example, the BBC reported a spate of dubious pro-China edits on 22 politically sensitive articles about Taiwan or pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong.