The Maine Republican Party has been caught lying about the role it played in creating a fake news website that was used to attack progressive candidates. The website, called the Maine Examiner, “is not listed as a business organization with the Maine secretary of state. It doesn’t list any owners or staff,” according to a Lewiston Sun Journal report.
The executive director of the Maine Republican Party, Jason Savage, has denied that he or his organization had any connection to the Maine Examiner. After noting how quickly reports from Maine Examiner were linked to on Savage’s social media accounts, the Maine People’s Alliance looked into things further. From the story above:
The clearest proof is a publicly-accessible error log on the website that includes internal URLs from the site’s hosting service. It shows that the hosting account responsible for the website is registered under the username “jasonsavage207.”
Additionally, the design template for the website was downloaded from mythemeshop.com and installed on September 17, 2017. A public profile for a professional account on that service with the username “jasonsavage207” shows that user last visited on that day.
Jason Savage’s Instagram handle is “jasonsavage207” and his Twitter username is “jsavage207.”
It is unclear why Savage would use any allusion to his real name, considering his history in the IT field.
Ironically, the Maine GOP has a tab on its website labeled “News You Can Trust.”