FBI and Twitter supposedly investigating Scully hack claim. We’ll wait.

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The controversy over a tweet posted on C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully’s Twitter account lives on.

After a tweet was posted Thursday that appeared to be meant as a direct message to Anthony Scaramucci, with Scully asking President Trump’s foe whether he should engage with the president, it was quickly dismissed as the work of a hacker and the FBI and Twitter are reportedly now investigating that claim.

 

Scully was set to moderate the second presidential debate scheduled this Thursday before it was canceled, and the tweet drew immediate fire for a perceived bias.

Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which had selected Scully for the event, came out Friday morning to claim that Scully’s account had been hacked — the C-SPAN political editor has yet to engage directly.

“Steve is a man of great integrity, okay?” Fahrenkopf said during an appearance on Fox News Radio’s The Brian Kilmeade Show. “I don’t know this question about whether he tweeted something out or not, I do know, and you’ll probably pick up on it in a minute, that he was hacked… Apparently, there’s something now that’s been on television and the radio saying that he talked to Scaramucci… He was hacked. It didn’t happen.”

Scully did post the tweet seen below after the town hall he was set to moderate was canceled:

While social media erupted with widespread skepticism over the hacking claim, the commission tweeted that the incident had been reported and is being investigated.

“Steve Scully notified us that his Twitter account was hacked,” the tweet stated. “CPD reported the apparent hack to the FBI and Twitter, and we understand that the federal authorities and Twitter are looking into the issue.”

Turns out, Scully has a history of blaming hackers for tweets posted on his account.

As BizPac Review reported Saturday, in both 2012 and 2013, Scully claimed that his account had been hacked in response to tasteless remarks tweeted.

In 2012, Scully tweeted: “I apologize for Saturday’s tweets regarding weight loss. Darn those hackers.”

And in 2013, he lamented: “I apologize for some earlier tweets…account was hacked…those tweets did not come from me.”

This is just the latest development in an already wild story that even saw Fox News host Chris Wallace intervene on Scully’s behalf.

Wallace was eviscerated online after the first presidential debate for his bias against Trump, and he weighed in to support the commission and to say he believes Scully is an “honorable, fair-minded reporter.”

After the tweet was posted, Scully’s entire account was taken down, before coming back up as locked, where only approved followers could see his tweets. The offending post was deleted at that point.

The online speculation was that Scully had “nuked” his account not being sure how to delete the tweet.

President Trump weighed in that same morning to call Scully a “Never Trumper,” and called on the debate commission to “fix” the problem of biased moderators.

For the record, Scully once served as an intern for then-Sen. Joe Biden and worked as a staffer for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Scaramucci, the former White House communications director under Trump who now backs Democratic nominee Joe Biden, certainly thought Scully’s tweet was legit, as he responded, “Ignore. He is having a hard enough time. Some more bad stuff about to go down.”

Scully’s apparent confidant took to Twitter to defend him.

“I accept @SteveScully at his word,” Scaramucci tweeted. “Let’s not cancel anymore people from our culture for absolutely something like this. It’s insignificant. He is an objective journalist.”

Here’s a quick sampling of responses from Twitter that shows the skepticism is as strong as ever:

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