On Tuesday, The New York Times announced that a 21-year-old supporter of Donald Trump brought in more than $7,000 in contributions via Twitter under the auspices of a fictitious group named ‘Gay Voices for Trump.’
Josh Hall of Mechanicsburg, Pa., told the Times that since February, he has maintained multiple Twitter accounts purporting to be the Trump’s relatives, including his late brother Robert, his youngest son Barron, and his sister Elizabeth Trump Grau.
After sending tweets promoting his efforts to reverse the outcome of the presidential election, Trump himself tweeted a link from a conservative site related to the Grau account.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. He actually thinks it’s his sister,’ ”Hall told the Times. “There was no nefarious intention behind it. I was just trying to rally up MAGA supporters and have fun.”
Hall has also used different online identities to spread conspiracy theories, such as implant microchips in Americans and another that the late John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive, popular among adherents of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. He also circulated misinformation about the coronavirus, impersonating Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, to say that the pandemic was “plotted by the powers that be to crash our economy in hopes that Trump will pay for it in November.”
There are more than 160,000 supporters in the accounts collectively, many of whom boosted the fundraiser for the non-existent Gay Voices for Trump and pulled in around $7,300. Twitter has since deleted the accounts.
Hall told the Times that GoFundMe still has the money, and the company said that anyone who asks for one would receive a refund.
He said he started the impersonation spree after his personal account had been suspended by the website, which Twitter said was for creating multiple accounts under multiple identities. His first such account was stated to be former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), whose jail term had just been commuted by Trump for trying to sell the Senate seat of former President Obama.
“Once I got banned from Twitter, my attitude was kind of like, ‘What the hell, I’m just going to have fun now,’ ” he told the newspaper.
