‘Elon, This is Not Free Speech’: Election Denying GOP Candidate Protests Temporary Twitter Suspension
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Twitter apparently suspended the personal account of the Republican nominee for secretary of state of Arizona, Mark Finchem, on Monday.
“Twitter has blocked my account from speaking truth with one week left until the election,” Finchem wrote on his official Facebook page Monday evening.
“They are trying to put their thumb on the scales of this election. Tag Elon Musk and tell him to unban me right now. I am the Secretary of State nominee in a swing state running against the criminal Soros-funded candidate,” he added, including a link to his fundraising page.
A few hours later Finchem posted an image from Twitter notifying him his account was “temporarily limited.”
“They won’t say what I did wrong. Elon, this is not free speech,” wrote Finchem above the image, calling out Twitter’s new owner who had vowed to make the social media platform a “free speech” zone.
Musk replied to former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis who commented on the suspension, saying he was “Looking into it.”
Finchem is running a hard-right campaign in Arizona and has repeatedly denied the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden in the state.
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Finchem, in which he doubled down on those accusations.
“Well, we’ve got information that’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office and you say that there was nothing there. OK. Then I’m gonna have to live with that. But do I know for a fact that there were other ballot trafficking operations around the country and some in Arizona? Yeah, I do,” Finchem told CBS’s Scott Pelley.
“Name one,” Pelley pushed.
“Yuma County, 25,000 ballots,” Finchem replied.
“Same fingerprints on those ballots for five individuals. So where’d that go? Where’s that evidence? I know it’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office. I know that the FBI field office actually did the prints,” he added after Pelley asks for details.
If elected on November 8th, Finchem will be in charge of Arizona’s elections and will be the second-ranking state-wide elected official as Arizona doesn’t have a lieutenant governor.
Pelley then explains that 60 Minutes researched the claim and “that’s false according to the FBI. Yuma County told us that no one in law enforcement fingerprinted 25,000 ballots. Finchem often says that evidence is with Attorney General Brnovich, implying that something big is coming.”
