Maine Sen. Angus King is facing some backlash after a list of social media accounts that were flagged as “suspicious” by his 2018 campaign were released.
The release is part of the ongoing “Twitter Files” saga, an effort by Twitter CEO Elon Musk and independent journalists to uncover what they claim are examples of political bias on the social media platform.
The list, which was made public on Saturday, included mostly conservative accounts. That included social media users who commented on posts by Republican state Sen. Eric Brakey, who was running against Sen. King at the time.
The spreadsheet was sent to Twitter in 2018 after King’s campaign manager met with a higher-up at the company about a video the campaign said was doctored and misleading.
King spokesperson Matthew Felling said in a statement that the accounts were not referred to Twitter for the express purpose of banning them, but to flag them for review. Felling said the campaign had two internal lists of accounts to flag misleading information from both sides of the political spectrum.