The Week on Politwoops: a selfie with Steubenville students, a backpack full of money and more

by
A picture of Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, taking a selfie with a group of students that was deleted from his official Twitter feed.
Image via Politwoops.

Welcome to another brief roundup of notable deleted tweets from U.S. politicians caught by the Sunlight Foundation’s Politwoops project this week. We start with the image to the right of Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, taking a selfie with a group of students that was deleted along with the message, “Great speaking with the enthusiastic students of Steubenville High School here with @CloseUp_DC.” The school tour group even responded to the tweet from his official feed with “Thanks for your time!” even though the original was removed after 15 minutes.

Champ Edmunds, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Montana, came across a bag full of money while cleaning up after an overflowed toilet in a church basement that he turned into police on Sunday and afterwards his campaign account tweeted, “Jst found a backpack with over $10k in it right by the basement door of the church! Turned it in to police. #mtsen #honestpolititian.” The message was deleted after an hour and two days later, the account tweeted “I did find a backpack with $12K in it. I did turn it in to police. I will not get that $. Supporters continue to fund campaign. #Sen2014” and responded “thanks for your kind words!” to a GOP consultant who mentioned the story after saying “Character is what you do when no one is watching.” No variants of the initial hashtag “#honestpolititian” have reappeared on his campaign account.

The campaign account of Roy Cho, a Democratic House candidate to represent New Jersey, was a victim of the social share buttons of an iOS app as a very common tweet was deleted after 29 seconds that said, “My iPhone orders food on @Seamless. What’s yours do? #eatandtweet.” A few weeks ago, the official account for Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., shared a similar fate when Politwoops caught a deleted tweet that said, “I just parked in Washington DC with @Parkmobile.

Politwoops catches random deletions on a regular basis and this week was no exception. Shayan Modarres, a Democratic candidate in Florida’s 10th District, deleted a simple message asking “How’s everybody doing tonight?” after 13 hours and the personal account of Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., removed one saying “Tell them to send pics.” As for last week’s image of Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., marching with a man in clown mask, his office declined to answer questions from the New York Observer’s Senior Editor Colin Campbell.

Following a tweet from USA Today’s Paul Singer, we’ve added a category for Vice President and included the newly-returned-to-Twitter Joe Biden. You can follow any deletions from him here and we’ll be sure to add VP challengers when the time comes. Thanks for the suggestion Paul and, as always, please drop us a line if you notice politicians we’re missing!